Coronavirus DK: Healthcare staff still at risk

Five patients and 35 employees have been infected at Nykøbing Falster Hospital in southern Denmark. This is the second large outbreak inside a hospital (DK). The hospital believes that the outbreak began with an elderly patient who was admitted to the ward for treatment of liver disease in March without Covid-19 symptoms. Two weeks later, the patient and two other patients showed Covid-19 symptoms. The ward was also used for cardiology patients and staff. The infected patients were serviced by several nurses, doctors, physical therapists and others who began to show symptoms and tested positive. As soon as the symptoms were discovered in the patients, they were moved to a separate ward. Five of the 10 patients in the ward were infected, and it was closed afterward. The hospital had followed all the rules in effect at the time that the patients in question were admitted, when there was no policy on testing all new admissions. The Healthcare authority introduced such a policy only this week. 

The Health Authority is finally making good on its intention to test more people for infection. Yesterday, nearly 8,000 people were tested (DK), an increase of 3,000 over the previous record. This week, the testing policy was changed to include people with mild symptoms. At the end of April, people without symptoms will also be able to be tested. This will cover people who have been in contact with an infected person or who work at a location where someone was infected. They will be tested at the new TestCenter that was set up in tents in Fælledparken in Copenhagen.

Update on the spread

The tests discovered 217 new infections, bringing the total of confirmed cases to 7,912 out of a total of 108,465 people tested. The number of deaths per day has fallen to the single digits this week, and total deaths now stand at 384. These figures may seem very small in relation to those in the US. For comparison, the number of deaths from Covid-19 per million inhabitants is 67 in Denmark versus 142 in the US. That is, even though the social distancing policy in Denmark appears to be working well and the Danish economy is reopening, the overall fatality rate for the US population is only little over twice as high. By this measure, the situation is much worse in other European countries, with 465 deaths per million in Spain, 414 in Italy, and 269 in the UK. Infections and deaths per day have begun declining in Europe, however, and they have not in the US.

Healthcare employees who become infected with Covid-19 can register their illness as a work injury (DK) and receive compensation for it. That policy was confirmed by Employment Minister Peter Hummelgaard in a press conference yesterday. According to the normal rules, an employee must document the specific situation in which she became infected and must test positive. The Employment Ministry has made an exception and will now honor claims if employees have worked in an ICU and have had contact with Covid-19 patients.

Debating herd immunity

Danish researchers dispute statements by Kåre Mølbak of the Statens Serum Institut (SSI) on the possibility of herd immunity (DK). Herd immunity requires that 60 percent of a population has recovered from infection and become resistant to it. According to Astrid Iversen, Professor of Virology and Immunology at Oxford University, that can take up to five years and immunity may last only one or two years. That has been the case with previous outbreaks of corona virus, the first SARS virus in 2003 and the MERS in 2012. There is much uncertainty about whether Covid-19 antibodies give protection against reinfection and about the effectiveness of herd immunity, and researchers believe that SSI has not explained this clearly.