Denmark registers second day with over 20,000 new Covid-19 cases
The last day saw 21,403 new cases of Covid-19 recorded by Denmark’s national infectious disease agency.
The agency, State Serum Institute (SSI) released the updated figures on Thursday afternoon.
Thursday’s figure is the second-highest recorded during the pandemic in Denmark behind the 23,228 recorded 24 hours earlier.
The 21,403 positive results came from 205,153 PCR tests, giving a positivity rate of 10.43 percent. The rate is considerably higher than earlier in the pandemic but roughly in line with and slightly lower than data from the first three days of this week, when it has been between 12 and 13 percent.
High demand means that authorities are currently giving priority for PCR tests to people with symptoms of the virus or who are close contacts to confirmed cases.
A total of 665 people are now in hospital with the coronavirus, 10 fewer than on Wednesday. 178 were admitted during the last day but admissions were outweighed by discharges.
The figure for hospital patients with Covid-19 can include patients in hospital for unrelated reasons who have tested positive for the virus during their stay. These patients still require additional resources due to isolation protocols. SSI said on Thursday that it would from January separate the total for patients in hospital for treatment due to Covid-19.
High discharge numbers are an encouraging sign that patients in hospital with Covid-19 are admitted for shorter periods than in earlier phases of the pandemic, an analyst suggested.
“In the same period last year we had around 4,500 infections per day, which resulted in 900 admitted patients [at the peak, ed.],” Eskild Petersen, professor of infectious diseases at Aarhus University, told news wire Ritzau.
“If you compare today’s admission numbers to the same period last year, it’s clear that we no longer get so ill from the corona virus. That is naturally also thanks to the vaccines,” Petersen said.
The professor also noted that some data suggest the Omicron variant, now dominant in Denmark, does not cause as severe disease as earlier variants.
Around 80 percent of positive tests in Denmark are currently caused by the variant.
READ ALSO: How will Danish New Year’s Eve be different – and the same – in 2021?
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The agency, State Serum Institute (SSI) released the updated figures on Thursday afternoon.
Thursday’s figure is the second-highest recorded during the pandemic in Denmark behind the 23,228 recorded 24 hours earlier.
The 21,403 positive results came from 205,153 PCR tests, giving a positivity rate of 10.43 percent. The rate is considerably higher than earlier in the pandemic but roughly in line with and slightly lower than data from the first three days of this week, when it has been between 12 and 13 percent.
High demand means that authorities are currently giving priority for PCR tests to people with symptoms of the virus or who are close contacts to confirmed cases.
A total of 665 people are now in hospital with the coronavirus, 10 fewer than on Wednesday. 178 were admitted during the last day but admissions were outweighed by discharges.
The figure for hospital patients with Covid-19 can include patients in hospital for unrelated reasons who have tested positive for the virus during their stay. These patients still require additional resources due to isolation protocols. SSI said on Thursday that it would from January separate the total for patients in hospital for treatment due to Covid-19.
High discharge numbers are an encouraging sign that patients in hospital with Covid-19 are admitted for shorter periods than in earlier phases of the pandemic, an analyst suggested.
“In the same period last year we had around 4,500 infections per day, which resulted in 900 admitted patients [at the peak, ed.],” Eskild Petersen, professor of infectious diseases at Aarhus University, told news wire Ritzau.
“If you compare today’s admission numbers to the same period last year, it’s clear that we no longer get so ill from the corona virus. That is naturally also thanks to the vaccines,” Petersen said.
The professor also noted that some data suggest the Omicron variant, now dominant in Denmark, does not cause as severe disease as earlier variants.
Around 80 percent of positive tests in Denmark are currently caused by the variant.
READ ALSO: How will Danish New Year’s Eve be different – and the same – in 2021?
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