1 more death associated with the Covid-19 disease occurred in Finland in the past 24 hours, the Finnish health authorities reported on Tuesday 16 March.
According to the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), this fatality, which was recorded in the Helsinki and Uusimaa hospital district, brought the total death toll in Finland to 801 since the global pandemic started.
Most of the deaths (520) have been recorded in the capital region, the epicenter of the epidemic and the worst hit area.
THL also reported 517 new infections detected in the past 24 hours.
So far, the total number of cases diagnosed in the Nordic country amounts to 67,851, according to THL's tally.
New variants
By Tuesday 16 March, a total of 1,736 cases caused by the recently described coronavirus variants have been identified in Finland. Of these, 1,633 are variants first detected in the UK, 102 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 283 nationwide. Of them, 49 were admitted to intensive care wards.
The country's incidence of new cases has increased slightly during the past week. According to THL, at the time of writing this article it was 165 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 340 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants have been diagnosed in the past 2-week period.
The incidence decreased in the Åland archipelago compared to one week ago. At the time of writing this article it was 252 per 100,000 residents, significantly less than a week ago.
The incidence of new cases in Southwest Finland (Turku and surroundings) was 233.4 new cases per 100,000.
In the Lapland hospital district, the incidence of new cases was 32.4 per 100,000 residents.
