According to officials from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are showing signs of stabilization, especially in the Helsinki metropolitan area.
At a press conference on Thursday, THL’s chief physician Otto Helve said that although the disease has not yet reached its peak in Europe, it seems that Finland is reaching the plateau. The number of weekly cases in Finland has not increased, Helve said at the press conference.
Case numbers suggest that Covid may have peaked in the metropolitan area, but Helve hesitates to confirm this. In many areas in Finland, the peak is still ahead.
"This is not a time to sigh with relief," said Helve.
The number of positive Covid cases in Finland last week was 52,000, compared with 57,000 the previous week. The number of new intensive care patients also decreased by about 50 per cent last week Liisa-Maria Voipio-PulkkiDirector of Strategy at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.
Caution is still warranted as the number of hospitalized patients is high.
"We still have a lot of patients in the hospital. However, the number of patients in intensive care has decreased slightly. Signs of serious cases are leveling off," said Helve.
When asked by the supplier when Covid-19 would be removed from the list of dangerous diseases, Taneli PuumalainenThe CEO of STM replied that Covid would remain on the list for legal reasons as it would give the country the tools to fight the disease at full capacity under the law.
"If we remove it from the list of dangerous diseases, we will lose the tools [to fight it]. Therefore, I think it would be sensible to keep it dangerous. Covid is constantly producing new surprises with new variants of the virus," said Puumalainen.
In Finland, 51.4 per cent of eligible recipients have received a third injection. Nearly 87 percent of people over the age of 60 have received all three doses of the vaccine. 84.1 percent of the general population has received two vaccines.
Source: The Nordic Page