Five more deaths associated with the Covid-19 disease occurred in Finland in the past 72 hours, the Finnish health authorities reported on Monday 29 March.
According to the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), these fatalities brought the total death toll in Finland to 822 since the global pandemic started.
Most of the deaths (531) have been reported in the capital region, the epicenter of the epidemic and the worst hit area.
THL also reported 1,671 new infections detected in the past 72 hours. Specifically, 791 new cases were diagnosed on Saturday 27 March, 458 on Sunday 28 March and 422 on Monday 29 March.
So far, the total number of cases diagnosed in the Nordic country amounts to 76,425, according to THL's tally.
New variants
By Monday 29 March, a total of 2,584 cases caused by the recently described coronavirus variants have been identified in Finland. Of these, 2,403 are variants first detected in the UK, 180 are variants first detected in South Africa and 1 corresponds to the Brazilian variant..
At the time of writing this article, the number of people in hospital care was 313 nationwide. Of them, 54 were admitted to intensive care wards.
The country's incidence of new cases decreased slightly during the past week. According to THL, at the time of writing this article it was 161.6 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the past 14-day period for the whole country.
Regional differences
However, the situation varies depending on the region.
Currently, the highest incidence in Finland is in the Helsinki-Uusimaa hospital district (the capital area), where 319.8 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants have been diagnosed in the past 2-week period.
The incidence of new cases in Southwest Finland (Turku and surroundings) also increased to 254.7 new cases per 100,000.
In the Lapland hospital district, the incidence of new cases was 29 per 100,000 residents.
