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This is the story about why the world's highest coronavirus death rate is in the heart of Europe, and home to its major institutions: Belgium. A THREAD. 1/11 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-25/why-the-world-s-highest-virus-death-rate-is-in-europe-s-capital?sref=2eap69Y7
It's not really fair on each country to compare total deaths, given that each has very different populations. The U.S. has over 50k, but its population is 330m. China's deaths of around 5k, may be an underestimate, but still likely small compared to its 1.4b pop 2/11
So the best way to compare is to per capita of the population ie. how many people are dying per 100k? Here, Belgium does very badly. Its rate of 57 fatalities, is four times that of the US and trumps all of its European peers (sorry San Marino, we're leaving you out) 3/11
So what's the answer for this? Belgium's hospitals haven't been overrun -- even at the peak of admission, the country still had 43% of its intensive care beds available. And yes, while people still take walks, lockdown measures were comparably timely to their European peers 4/11
Belgium's bureaucratic rigor. Unlike many countries, those who die in elderly care homes are being added to the death count, even if they haven't necessarily been laboratory-tested for having the disease. Indeed over 90% of those attributed to the virus, haven't been tested 5/11
That sounds dodgy, but it's all to do with a concept called "excess mortality" -- how many more people are dying this year than would normally be expected in a typical year. Normally in Belgium, 300 people die per day. This year, that figure is closer to 600 6/11
Counting the elderly takes Belgium to a whisker of making up those extra fatalities. But in many countries -- take the Netherlands to the North -- nearly 1,000 are left unexplained per week! 7/11 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-25/why-the-world-s-highest-virus-death-rate-is-in-europe-s-capital?sref=2eap69Y7
"We often get criticism -- oh, you’re making Belgium look bad -- we think it’s the opposite,” Steven Van Gucht, who leads a daily briefing, told me (from 1.5m) “If you want to compare our numbers with a lot of other countries, you basically have to cut them in half” 8/11
This really matters tho. Without really mass-scale testing, counting the numbers of deaths are the best way to see how the disease is spreading. If you aren't doing that, then it makes it really difficult to tackle 9/11
It also shines the light on an aspect of the disease that we didn't really see coming in Europe: how it would ravage care homes. We knew we needed ICU beds, ventilators, nurses, but not how much our system of looking after old people would be compromised 10/11
"It’s a disaster,” Agoritsa Baka, a senior expert at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. "We did not realize how devastating Covid would be if it entered these populations” 11/11. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-25/why-the-world-s-highest-virus-death-rate-is-in-europe-s-capital?sref=2eap69Y7
Here's our story on the problem Europe's nursing homes are facing: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-25/nursing-homes-are-key-to-coronavirus-fight?srnd=premium-europe @naomikresge @LauraMillanL and @arascouet
