Belgium Passes Critical Peak Of COVID-19

Kota Liege, Belgia (Taton Moise / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Regional closure or lockdown is Belgium's main option in curbing the spread of COVID-19. The results are quite significant. Now, Belgium can pass a critical peak as fewer patients are admitted to hospital.

Typically, hospitals in Belgium receive 600 cases daily. Finally, the number started to experience a decrease in daily patients to 127 cases alone, which was recorded on Sunday, April 26th.

Launching Reuters, the decline in the number of cases is an encouraging sign for Belgium. How not, daily patient admissions began to enter the lowest level since March 18. In fact, if calculated, the number of new COVID-19 cases also decreased by 553 per month.

This decline, apart from part of the effect of the weekend, was due to Belgium's swiftness in anticipating the initial spread of COVID-19 with a lockdown. As a result, restaurants, cafes, non-food shops, fitness centers and schools have been closed by the owner of the policy.

On that basis, the government began outlining a new plan that would allow a gradual easing of the lockdown policy starting May 4. The easing is accompanied by a series of plans for the reopening of the lockdown phase which refers to the status of the development of COVID-19.

This was revealed directly by the spokesman for COVID-19 who is also a virologist from Belgium, Steven van Gucht. He also gave a message at a press conference on Monday, regarding how the public should act against the spread of the virus from Wuhan.

One way to do this is to suggest that Belgians should stay at home as much as possible. "Currently, COVID-19 is almost under control, steps such as physical distancing and always wearing a mask must continue to be carried out for the coming weeks," said Steven.

Meanwhile, so far Belgium has confirmed 46,687 cases of COVID-19 transmission. Among them, there were 7,207 cases died.