I've committed myself to doing updates every ten days on the general situation; there is not much to report from real life since last time, though I was very unreasonably excited about having an actual in-person work meeting last Tuesday. (With an ambassador, who is of course not subject to Belgian rules, though we naturally observed correct hygiene protocols.)

We’re also under stronger restrictions about visiting B, so in retrospect I’m very glad I took her to Hélécine three weeks ago. She’s allowed one regular contact (Anne) and once occasional contact (me), but I can’t see her on my own and can’t touch her (not that she is very touchy-feely anyway). This is annoying, but it’s understandable and it’s nothing like as bad as the spring when we could not see either of the girls for three months. U has continued to go back and forth between us and the residential centre. Her school has closed, of course.

The big story for me is that the numbers are now definitely going in the right direction. Hospital numbers peaked at 7485 on 4 November and are now 5017, almost a third lower. The ICU peak was more recent, on 10 November, at 1474, now 1201, down by 20%. Deaths seem to have peaked at 214 on 6 November, and are at 150-ish for the most recent complete days. Looking back to May, when the restrictions were eased enough for some office work to resume, hospitalisation numbers were then 3,000, ICU numbers 600, and deaths 80-ish, so I think we have some wasy to go still.

It felt like this second wave took longer to peak than the first, but in fact that’s not true. As I said in a previous post, in the spring, the lockdown hit on 17 March, and the peak of hospitalisation was reached on 6 April, 20 days later; the peak in intensive care on 8 April, 22 days later; and the peak of fatalities on 12 April, 26 days later. This time around the lockdown was announced on 16 October but went into effect on 19 October. The peak in hospitalisations was only 15 days later, the peak in deaths 17 days later and the peak in ICU 22 days later. However the peaks were higher in two out of three cases – the exception is deaths, which have been fewer than in the spring, presumably in part because they are now taking better precautions in care homes and in part because the most vulnerable are already dead.

The really encouraging number is the fall in the number of detected infections, a leading indicator (which however is reported late), where the peak weekly average (for 22-28 October) was 16,142 and the most recent number (for 12-18 November) is 4,166, a drop of 74%. The methodology of testing was changed in October but I think before that peak occurred. (They are changing back again tomorrow, to testing anyone who wants to be tested, so that will cause a bump in the figures.) The government’s adviser Steven Van Gucht said a couple of weeks ago that he reckoned the peak had been around 29 October, and he seems to have been about right.

One local point of interest is that our own municipality currently has the fourth lowest infection rate of anywhere in Belgium, and of the big cities Leuven is doing the best by far. We take our crumbs of comfort where we can get them.

And I have had a tweet that went viral.

Our new prime minister got some headlines by saying that Christmas should not be a time for parties. In the spring it was about eight weeks before we had a partial return to the office. I think it’s likely to be longer this time round.