BRUSSELS, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- An average of 5,057 new COVID-19 cases per day were diagnosed in Belgium between Oct. 4 and Oct. 10, the Sciensano public health institute reported on Wednesday.
"This is a major increase of 93 percent compared to the previous week," said Yves Van Laethem, interfederal COVID-19 spokesman, at a press conference.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo visited the University Hospital Saint-Luc (UCL) in Brussels. He voiced concern about the increase in recent days in the number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 infections and said that it was important to curb this increase in order to guarantee the availability of hospital beds for non-coronavirus patients.
In Belgium, "the number of new infections, the number of hospitalizations continues to increase alarmingly," Laethem noted.
Between Oct. 4 and Oct. 10, Sciensano reported an average of 152 new hospitalizations, a week-on-week increase of 81 percent, according to Sciensano.
The infections continue to spread evenly across all age groups, and "a quarter of them are among young people in their twenties and older," Laethem noted.
To date, Belgium has recorded 173,240 COVID-19 cases and 10,244 deaths.
As the world is in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries across the globe -- including China, Russia, Britain and the U.S. -- are racing to find a vaccine.
According to the website of the World Health Organization (WHO), as of Oct. 2, 193 COVID-19 candidate vaccines were being developed worldwide, 42 of them in clinical trials. Enditem
