Daily number of cases can no longer help the authorities in the crisis to make serious decisions about measures. Experts are therefore calling for a rethink. As with the flu, data on hospital stays and deaths are to be published, but no more figures on the number of cases. Because the number of cases skyrocketing under Omikron would unnecessarily cause panic. One thing must be clear, the virus cannot be completely eliminated.
“Case numbers cause a lot of panic and fear, but they no longer reflect what used to be the case, namely that the hospital admissions match the cases,” says infectiologist Monica Gandhi of the University of California at San Francisco. New infections broke the record in the USA at the end of the year. But while the number of cases in the United States almost tripled in the last two weeks, the number of hospital stays increased by almost 20 percent and the number of deaths fell by five percent, reports “Blick”.
Gandhi even wishes that case numbers would no longer be published at all. It appears that this approach is already being implemented in Canada. Robert Strang, chief health officer for the eastern Canadian Atlantic province of Nova Scotia, told media on Thursday that the government agency was no longer focusing on the daily count of cases. “We no longer need to identify every single case of the variant and have it treated by the health authority,” said Strang. Omicron is all around us, and we have to be aware that it can be infected anywhere.
A rethink began in Great Britain too. England has reported more than 160,000 new cases for the second day in a row, more than ever since the outbreak of the pandemic almost two years ago. But the British government only wants new restrictions “as an absolute last resort”. In the intensive care units, the situation is still less dramatic than it was about a year ago.
