People are going back to hospital
After sharp drops in March and April, hospital emergency departments across Europe are returning to their pre-COVID levels.
While continuing to rise in Russia, the US and emerging markets, the number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals in Europe has been falling since early April.
Efforts by hospitals themselves and the people they serve worked to ensure hospital capacity was there for a COVID-19 surge. One of these was a fall in A&E attendances which dropped 30-50% in the UK, France, Germany and Portugal as shown in the graph below.
Now, a mix of public health messaging telling people not to ignore ailments and a weakening of ‘Coronoia’ means hospital emergency departments are seeing their year-on-year figures approach last year’s. For June, the fall compared to 2019 is 15-30%.
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