Hospitals struggling amid Covid spike in Stockholm

(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Hospitals in the Swedish capital are struggling to cope with a surge in new cases of Covid-19 after seeing an increase of around 75 patients requiring hospital care since the end of last week, the local authority said yesterday.
The Covid-19 respiratory disease is caused by the coronavirus.
The number of new cases has surged across the Nordic nation in recent weeks, rising past peaks hit during the spring, although a huge increase in testing since the pandemic struck early in the year makes comparisons difficult.
Sweden's biggest region, Stockholm, is again among the areas hardest hit by infections and hospitalisations after a spring and early summer when it accounted for well over a third of the country's more than 6,000 dead in the pandemic.
'We can see today a large increase in the number of patients who have become so ill with Covid-19 that they need to be treated in hospital, Bjorn Eriksson, the director of healthcare for the region of Stockholm, said in a statement. 'The pressure on our front-line hospitals is significant.
There were 349 Covid-19 patients being treated in Stockholm hospitals and geriatric wards yesterday, up from 273 on Friday, the region said.
Other areas, centred around cities such as Gothenburg and Malmo, have also seen hospitalisations mount.
The percentage of tests coming back positive has also climbed in a country that gained international attention for a strategy that rejected lockdowns and still mainly relies on voluntary social distancing recommendations.
In Stockholm, 20.3% of the about 42,000 people tested last week were shown to be infected, up from 16.3% in the previous week and 8.4% in the week before that, a spokeswoman for the region's Karolinska University Hospital said.
Sweden registered 4,697 new coronavirus cases on Friday, the latest in a string of new record daily increases.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and two top presidential and government officials have tested positive for the coronavirus, presidential and government offices said yesterday.
'The head of state is feeling well and will continue to perform his duties remotely in self-isolation, Zelenskiy's office said in a statement.
Zelenskiy's wife, Olena, contracted Covid-19 in June and spent several weeks in a hospital.
Minutes after Zelenskiy's announcement, Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential office, said on Facebook that he had also tested positive for the virus.
Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko has been diagnosed with Covid-19 as well and will work remotely, his ministry said.
Yesterday Italy's government ramped up coronavirus restrictions in Tuscany and four other regions, a health ministry source said, in a new attempt to rein in the second wave of the epidemic.
The government issued a decree last week which toughens up national curbs and divides the country into three zones according to the intensity of their outbreaks.
The peak of the coronavirus pandemic in France is still to come, its top health official Jerome Salomon said yesterday, urging the population to remain vigilant.
French cities that were put under curfew in October were however starting to see a lesser spread of the respiratory disease, he added.
'We are at a crucial moment, Salomon told a news conference.
The government imposed a new lockdown on October 30 to rein in a surge in new cases although the restrictions were softer than in March to limit the impact on the eurozone's second-biggest economy.
Spain's coronavirus death toll meanwhile rose to 39,345 yesterday, an increase of 512 compared with Friday, according to health ministry data.
However, the number of deaths during the past seven days was slightly down at 1,054 yesterday compared with Friday's 1,088.
The total cumulative number of cases rose to 1,381,218 yesterday from 1,328,832 on Friday.
Germany's Duesseldorf city was forced yesterday to lift an order for residents to wear masks against the coronavirus, after a citizen successfully sued against the blanket rule.
The setback for the western city came as Germany is fighting a surging second wave of Covid-19, with new daily cases reaching record levels almost every other day.
Duesseldorf authorities on Wednesday ordered masks in public across the city, with the exception of parks and cemeteries, unless the possibility of encountering other people who are fewer than 5m away can be precluded.
In its ruling, the court called Duesseldorf's order confusing because it did not provide clarity on 'which conduct is required while at the same time threatening a fine in case of non-compliance.
City authorities said they would re-examine the wording of their mask order following the ruling.
Russia reported a record high of 21,798 new coronavirus infections yesterday as the authorities called for stricter measures to contain the virus in certain regions.
'It is necessary to strengthen restrictions and control over their implementation in the regions where the daily case load and the infection is spreading at rates significantly higher than the average Russian levels, Anna Popova, head of Russia's consumer health watchdog, told Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin at a televised meeting with government officials.
She said the regions where restrictions should be increased include the Far Eastern Magadan and Sakhalin regions, as well as the Arkhangelsk and Ulyanovsk regions, among others.
The number of new coronavirus cases registered in the Netherlands fell sharply yesterday, continuing a decline that began in early November after entering a second near-lockdown on October 13.
There were 4,680 new cases reported yesterday, according to official data from the National Institute for Health (RIVM), compared to 5,664 on Sunday and less than half the all-time high of 11,119 registered on October 30.

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