Looking back at the early stages of the Corona outbreak in Belgium, and at the patterns of spread over almost all of the country, a time-lapse video gives an interesting extra perspective.
Early in April, before the main deployment of Covid testing, two significant clusters of outbreak had already become evident. One was in the South-western part of Limburg province, concentrated around municipalities such as Sint-Truiden and Alken. This region then rapidly developed into the most infected region in Belgium, at least in terms of confirmed cases. The other cluster was in Hainaut province in Mons and in the neighbouring municipalities lying South and West towards the French border. Apart from these two, outbreaks in the rest of the country seemed isolated at first. However, due to the limited testing capacity in those early weeks, and to differences in testing strategy and testing behaviour many more cases must have existed but remained invisible.
Of the other regional outbreaks, two in particular started to spread fast: Bouillon/Neufchateau again near the French border and, further East, Vielsalm. Both are small rural towns with surrounding municipalities in the thinly populated Ardennes region. Numbers of confirmed infections in both these rural regions have kept growing, at first without attracting much attention, so that today Bouillon and Alken have almost equal infection rates, as the numbers one and two in the ranking.
Looking at the map shows not only the growth and spread of confirmed cases, but also demonstrates as much about the increase in testing as about the infection rate itself. However, regional patterns remain remarkably stable. As would be expected they indicate that an early outbreak and a large spread of the virus prior to the lockdown, as in those 4 early clusters, almost inevitably leads to a larger local outbreak. In other words, the importance of early control of an outbreak is clearly visible in the regional infection patterns even today.
As we now know, the virus has spread all over Belgium. At first the 4 early clusters just expanded, then new clusters emerged, until finally all infected regions start to reach each other and merge together. Regional differences in the infection rates still remain evident, but no region is spared.
Surprisingly, the Brussels region shows up later in the sequence. Right up until halfway through April, when Covid mortality was already nearing its peak, confirmed infection rates in 18 of the 19 Brussels’ municipalities – Anderlecht being the exception – were still below the 3 cases per 1000 benchmark. Even today, although confirmed cases rates have risen sharply in Brussels, confirmed Covid-related mortality and seasonal excess mortality in the capital city suggest an under-estimation of the true infection rate in Brussels compared to the rest of the country.
Finally, it is also interesting to look at regions where infection rates have remained low throughout the last months. The city of Ghent is a good example. It is by far the largest city that remained below the 3 per 1000 threshold. Moreover, unlike Brussels, where a 102% excess mortality was noted compared to seasonal averages (i.e. more than double the normal figures in weeks 12 to 18), Ghent recorded just 22% more deaths than in previous years. The mortality rates also confirm Ghent’s favourable position. Taking all medium-sized cities and towns into account, only Ostend shows (slightly) better results.
