According to Dušek, the wave of the omikro epidemic will peak next week
Updates: 14.01.2022 13:39
Released: 14.01.2022, 13:39
Prague – The wave of the omicron epidemic will peak next week and next, at the end of January there will be a clear decline. According to various scenarios, 500 to 900 covid of positive people can go to the hospital in five to ten days a day. This was stated by Ladislav Dušek, director of the Institute of Health Information and Statistics (ÚZIS), in an interview with ČTK. On Thursday, 11,675 positively tested daily were added to the statistics, of which over 3,000 were in Prague. The increase in the number of cases in the metropolis will probably reach its maximum next week.
According to Dušek, there is no doubt that omicron makes up more than half of new cases in the whole country, even more in Prague. However, he expects a further increase in the number of positive tests, according to some scenarios to 50,000 per day, which would be almost double the current maximum at the end of November.
“The week has a certain testing logistics. As we test across schools, we always produce more tests on Mondays and we will see the highest peak of the week on Tuesday. This week is not the highest peak on Tuesday and there is no downhill, but it lasts until yesterday This is the first signal, this is the signal before further growth, “Dušek explained. It then expects maximum numbers and the beginning of the decline by the end of January.
According to him, however, other parameters of the epidemic are also needed. For example, the decline in the proportion of positives from all tests has stopped and is rising again. In diagnostic tests, ie in people with symptoms, it again exceeded 25 percent. As with the onset of the delta wave, the infection is most widespread among young people under the age of 29, who have the most contacts and are the least vaccinated.
Since the end of last year, the number of hospitalized has been declining, on Thursday there were 1,900, 350 of them in serious condition. Patients arrive at the hospital five to ten days after the infection.
According to a realistic scenario, which assumes a less severe course of the disease in those infected with omicron, about 50 to 70 percent of people in hospitals will be against the delta wave. At one time, up to 5,000 can be hospitalized with a covid. Risk models number up to six million infected, and a month of them threatened to be serious, predicting the same or even slightly worse occupancy of the hospital than in the autumn during the delta wave. At that time, a maximum of 9,500 were hospitalized in one day.
However, Dušek reminded that currently hospitals are not empty, but about 30 percent of them are patients after covid-19 treatment, who still need medical care. could occur there in some regions, although omicron, according to available data, has less health impacts. “If two and a half to three times as many are infected than in the delta and the hospital needs two and a half to three times less, then it is still the same number,” he added.
