The latest Public Health update on COVID-19 indicates that hospitalisations have increased, even though the number of people testing positive in PCR tests has fallen.
Health officials say this may show that the number of detected cases is an “underestimate of the true incidence in the population”.
Under current regulations, anyone testing positive with an LFT test is required to inform Public Health and undergo a confirmatory PCR test. This allows Public Health to gauge the number of cases on island and analyse the tests to determine the prevalence of COVID-19 variants.
However, it appears that many people are opting not to take PCR tests, thus skewing the official figures.
In the week the report covers – 17-23 July – 15 people required inpatient treatment in hospital, an increase of 25% compared to the week before when 12 people needed in-hospital care. Two of the 15 patients required supplemental oxygen, and one was treated at the Intensive Care Unit.
There were nine new admissions last week, the same as the week before, according to the update.
Of the 346 people who have been hospitalised since March 2020, when local cases were first detected, 60% were unvaccinated, and 40% had some level of vaccination coverage. Only one person who has received two vaccine doses and two boosters has been hospitalised.
The number of confirmed new cases fell 21%, from 401 during the week of 10-16 July to 323 last week, while the number of PCR tests dropped from 876 to 718.
Drive-through PCR testing is currently available on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at the Truman Bodden Sports Centre.
Genomic testing of samples from the PCR tests is showing that there has been an increase locally in the number of BA.5, BA.4 and BE.1 sub-variants of the Omicron strain.
In a press briefing on Wednesday, World Health Organization officials said COVID-19 deaths have been increasing worldwide for the last five weeks and several countries are reporting increasing trends in hospitalisations following waves of transmission driven by the Omicron sub-variants.
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This is not surprising with that people are done reporting and the stats are going this way. People are done with Covid and realize this will be in our lives for year and all will contract the virus 3-5 times.