Finland reports 654 new infections, 4 deaths in the last 72 hours

Finnish health authorities reported Monday 654 new Covid-19 infections and 4 more deaths occurred during the last 72 hours.

Of them, 498 cases were reported between Saturday and Sunday 17-18 April and 156 cases on Monday 19 April.

According to the figures released by National Institute for health and Welfare, the 5.5 million country has recorded 84,287 infections and 891 deaths associated with the disease since the pandemic started.

Most of those deaths (578) occurred the region of Helsinki and Uusimaa, which is the epicenter of the epidemic and the worst hit area in Finland.

By Monday 19 April, a total of 4,200 cases caused by the recently described coronavirus variants have been found in Finland.

Of these, 3,658 are variants first detected in Great Britain, 359 are variants first detected in South Africa and 1 corresponds to the Brazilian variant.

Less patients, lower incidence

The number of hospitalized patients continued to fall during the past week.

At the time of writing this article, the number of people in hospital care was 166 nationwide. Of them, 34 were admitted to intensive care wards.

The country's incidence of new cases also decreased slightly during the past week.

According to THL, at the time of writing this article it was 85.3 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the past 14-day period for the whole country (107.7 one week before).

Regional differences

However, the situation varies depending on the region.

Currently, the highest incidence in Finland is in the East Savo hospital district, where 157.8 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants have been diagnosed in the past 2-week period.

In Helsinki-Uusimaa (the capital area), the incidence is 152.6 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants (204.4 one week ago).