Eight more deaths associated with the Covid-19 disease occurred in Finland in the past 48 hours, Finnish health authorities reported on Thursday 7 January. Of them, 5 were recorded in the Helsinki-Uusimaa region.
According to the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), these fatalities brought the total death toll in Finland to 584 since the pandemic started. Most of the deaths (400) have been recorded in the capital region, the epicenter of the epidemic and the worst hit area.
THL also reported 554 new infections detected in the past 48 hours. Specifically, 331 cases were reported on Wednesday 6 January and 223 on Thursday 7 January.
So far, the total number of diagnosed cases in the Nordic country amounts to 37,772.
Hospitals, vaccinations
The number of people hospitalized is 186. Of them, 32 are admitted to intensive care units.
To date, Finland has administered the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to 8,155 people, according to data from the Finnish National Immunization Registry. However, THL says there are delays in recording the data, so the actual number of people vaccinated "is higher than reported."
Source: THL.
Incidence of new cases
The country's incidence of new cases remained stable on Thursday. According to THL, at the time of writing this article it was 60.9 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the past two weeks for the whole country.
However, the situation varies depending on the region.
In the Helsinki-Uusimaa area, the most populated part of the country, the incidence for the preceding 14 days was 107.1 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The incidence of new cases in Southwest Finland (Turku and surroundings) was 103.2 per 100,000.
In the Lapland hospital district, the incidence slightly decreased to 22.2 cases per 100,000 residents.
Currently, the lowest incidence in Finland is in the Kainuu hospital district, whose main city is Kajaani, where 7 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants have been diagnosed in the past 2-week period.
