The forecast consortium presented this less than optimistic outlook on Wednesday. According to the consortium’s prevalence estimate, variants BA.4/BA.5 are currently responsible for around 80 percent of corona cases in Austria.
For July 6th – the last forecast day – the experts expect a seven-day incidence of between 922 and 1,518 across Austria. A point estimate of 1,200 was given as the mean. In relation to the daily number of cases, this means that up to 19,473 cases can be expected on the last day of the forecast. The average would therefore be just under 15,000. 12,509 new infections were reported on Wednesday, the seven-day incidence was 707.8.
Strong increase in hospital numbers
The assessment of the experts has turned quite a bit since the beginning of the month. While the Covid forecast consortium still assumed a downward trend at the beginning of the month, the incidence of infection increased with the dominance of the subvariants BA.4/5. A sharp increase in the number of hospitals was already expected in the previous week.
The development of the number of cases also affects the development of the corona situation in the hospitals. The 856 hospital patients reported today should definitely rise above 1,000 in the coming week. The experts expect up to 1,499 patients in the normal wards next Wednesday, by the last forecast day for the hospital coating on July 13th it could be up to 2,598, but at least 1,327. In the intensive care units, the experts believe an increase from 47 today to up to 83 in a week and up to 134 in two weeks is possible. The median was 72 in the coming week and 100 in two weeks.
Incidence has quadrupled since the beginning of the month
However, the consortium also acknowledged that forecasting is “complicated by above-average fluctuations in reported cases, which are also observed in daily fluctuations in seven-day incidence, which is usually robust to daily outliers”. And there should be a high number of unreported cases: this is indicated by increased positivity rates.
On the development in context: The seven-day incidence has more than quadrupled since the beginning of the month. On June 1, it was still 173.5. The proportion of positive PCR tests also increased by a factor of more than four. The weekly average of the positive rate is currently 8.5 percent, at the beginning of the month it was 1.8 percent.
Source: Nachrichten
