Investigation: Almost 1.3 Million People Can Be Actively Sick With Coronavirus In Belarus

The Ministry of Health gives the figures that are understated by 60 times.

At the end of August, The Lancet published a study comparing the frequency of hospitalizations of patients in a heterogeneously vaccinated population infected with an alpha strain and a delta strain of coronavirus, writes the White Coats Telegram channel.

The large cohort study included information on 43,338 patients with COVID-19, 8,682 of whom were infected with the delta strain and 34,656 with alpha. The study was carried out at the junction of the change of strains - when the delta strain just got into the country and it gradually replaced the alpha variant of the coronavirus.

According to the study, 196 (2.3%) patients with the delta strain and 764 (2.2%) patients with the alpha strain were hospitalized within 14 days of diagnosis.

That is, at the time of the onset of the delta epidemic, the percentage of severe cases requiring hospitalization in the delta strain differed insignificantly from those in alpha and was at about 2.3%.

If we consider together hospitalizations of patients and calls to the emergency medical service, then for the delta this indicator was also higher than 498 (5.7%) patients with the delta strain were hospitalized and sought urgent medical care against the same 1,448 (4.2 %) of patients with the alpha strain.

The risk of hospitalization was also calculated to be twice as high for people with the delta strain compared with those with alpha, after adjusting for differences such as age, gender, and ethnicity.

Most of the patients (74%) in the study group were unvaccinated.

So, in this study, we have a larger unvaccinated population in which the delta strain is spreading, with 2.3% of cases that will require hospitalization.

Now let's try to hypothetically extrapolate these figures to Belarus.

So, Pinevich says that 29.5 thousand beds in Belarus are now occupied by COVID patients. If we assume that the percentage of patients requiring hospitalization for infection with the delta strain of COVID in Belarus will be similar to that in England, then 29.5 thousand patients make 2.3% of all infected with the delta strain.

By simple calculations, we find that in this case, the number of actively ill people now throughout the country should be about 1,282,608.

More than a million patients with different severity forms of COVID. The Ministry of Health of Belarus, on the other hand, modestly reports 22,340.

Takeaways... What takeaways can there be?