Covid-19: a Spike in Infections in the Monaco Region

There are some worrying early signs of another spike of Covid-19 infections. This time the evidence is from the Beausoleil screening Centre (recently in full operation).

The Centre uses an anti-gene test that detects infected people who have a heavy viral load. It is particularly important to isolate those people because they are very contagious. Getting the potential super-spreaders out of harm’s way of the healthy is one way of breaking the chain of infections in the community. 

For its first 900 or so visitors to the Centre the news was reportedly favourable with just above 20 tests showing positive. That is less than half the Departmental rate which peaked above 5%. 

Christmas Spoiler

But on the two days after Christmas there was an evident up-tick in infections in the approximately 45 per day visits, with reportedly 5 positive readings the first day and 8 positives the next. 

Is this much higher rate the impact of dropping one’s guard at Christmas? 

The samples are too small to be definitive but enough to put us on our guard and pay strict attention to keeping a social distance, wearing masks and washing hands frequently.