COVID-19 patients in hospitals on the rise

COVID-19 cases are spreading widely among the people and the number of coronavirus patients in hospitals has increased, said Ministry of Social Affairs and Health on Thursday.

Vaccinated people, however, have a lower risk of developing the severe form of the disease.

Multiple COVID-19 variants are circulating in Finland, but their impact on the epidemic is not yet clear.

In October, about 12,000–13,000 cases have been registered in Finland every week. The number of registered cases does not currently reflect the actual disease burden, because people decide whether to take a formal laboratory test based on the current testing strategy and the regional recommendations.

The overall amount of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in Finland’s wastewater is now on the same level as in early 2022.

All regions where samples were taken had high levels of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater. This means that COVID-19 is circulating widely among the population. The real number of infections is likely to be many times higher that the number of registered infections.

The number of COVID-19 patients has increased over the past few weeks. The proportion of patients who were admitted to hospital for reasons other than COVID-19 has increased in some regions. The treatment periods of patients hospitalised due to COVID-19 have become shorter.

While the number of deaths caused directly or indirectly by COVID-19 remains considerable, there are more and more cases where COVID-19 was not the direct cause of death or it did not contribute to the death.

The BA.5 subvariant of the Omicron variant has been the dominant strain of the virus since summer 2022.

There are numerous descendants of BA.5, such as BF.7 and BQ.1, that are currently circulating in Finland. So far, these lineages have only accounted for a small proportion of infections, and their clinical picture appears to be similar to those of the previous Omicron lineages. However, the spread of these virus variants may accelerate the epidemic in future.