The Gov.UK Coronavirus (COVID-19) dashboard (more) provides a daily update on numbers of tests, confirmed cases, hospitalisations and deaths across the UK. This information includes the number of patients currently in hospital with COVID-19. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) provides equivalent information on daily hospital bed occupancy for most European countries (more).
The pattern of hospitalisation rates since week 36 in 2020 is set out in Figure 3.1 for a select number of European countries, with more complete information set out in Table 3.1 since the start of 2021 for all those European countries providing this data. Hospitalisation rates have more than doubled since the beginning of the year in Bulgaria, Hungary, Norway and Poland, whilst hospital occupancy has fallen to 9% and 14% of the levels at the start of the year for the UK and Portugal respectively.
Figure 3.1 – Daily hospital occupancy per 100,000 for select European countries since week 36, 2020
Source: ECDC & Gov.UK, analysis by COIOS Research
Table 3.1 – Daily hospital occupancy per 100,000 by week for those countries providing data to ECDC and the UK since start of 2021
Source: ECDC & Gov.UK, analysis by COIOS Research
The rapid increase in cases and hospitalisations across Europe has been ascribed to the spread of the 501Y.V1 (Kent) variant, which has been associated with higher transmission and higher mortality rates. Analysis from Covariant.org (more) in Figure 3.2 shows how the prevalence of this variant has increased in various European countries, following earlier patterns seen in the UK.
Figure 3.2 – Prevalence of 501Y.V1 (Kent) variant based on sequencing
Source: Covariant.org