Luxembourg's Ministry of Health, together with the National Health Laboratory (Laboratoire National de Santé - LNS) and the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), has issued a COVID-19 retrospective for the week of 14 to 20 June 2021.

During this period, the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 continued to decline for the twelfth consecutive week, from 189 to 90 (down 52.3%). The number of their identified close contacts also fell over one week, from 742 to 396 (down 46.6%).

The number of PCR tests carried out last week increased from 45,745 to 46,380.

230 individuals tested positive following a rapid antigen test (i.e. the same number as the previous week).

As of Sunday 20 June 2021, the number of active infections was down again with 258 (compared to 498 as of 13 June) and the number of people having recovered from the virus increased from 69,129 to 69,459. The average age of people diagnosed with COVID-19 dropped from 33 to 27.7 years over one week.

The week of 14 to 20 June was the second consecutive week in which no COVID-19-related deaths had been recorded since the week of 21 to 27 September 2020. 

In hospitals, there has been a further decrease in admissions, with no new admissions of confirmed COVID-19 patients in normal care and the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care remaining stable at two. The average age of hospitalised patients increased from 54 to 64 years. Faced with this marked improvement in the situation in Luxembourg's hospitals, all new admissions can once again be treated in a single hospital.

For the reference period, the effective reproduction rate (RT eff) decreased from 0.70 to 0.58 and the positivity rate on all tests carried out fell from 0.41% to 0.19% (average over the week). The same trend could be observed for the positivity rate on tests performed through a doctor's prescription (i.e. people with symptoms), which fell from 1.19% to 0.58%.

The incidence rate clearly continued its downward trend across all age groups, with fourteen cases per 100,000 inhabitants (down from 30) over seven days. The lowest incidence rate was recorded in the 60-74 and 75+ age groups, with five cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The 0-14 age group now has the highest incidence rate with 25 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by the 15-29 age group with 20 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

For the week of 14 to 20 June, 467 people were in isolation (down 32%) and 515 were in quarantine (down 22%).

The family circle remained the most frequent context of transmission of COVID-19 infections (41.3%), followed by the education environment (12.9%) and travel abroad (10.9%). The source of infection was not clearly attributable in 32.6% of cases (down from 39.1% the previous week).

Vaccinations: update

For the week of 14 to 20 June, a total of 43,866 vaccine doses were administered in Luxembourg. 25,140 people received their first dose whilst 18,726 people received their second dose, bringing the total number of vaccinations administered as of 23 June to 505,986. A total of 217,234 people have been fully vaccinated to date.

Evolution of variants

For the week of 7 to 13 June 2021, population sequencing coverage was 36%.

Concerning the 189 samples carried out for week 23/2021, the following distribution can be observed:

  • the Alpha (British) variant (B.1.1.7) represented 50.5% of cases (up from 47.4% in week 22);
  • the Delta (Indian) variant (B.1.617) represented 35.0% of cases (up from 30.4%);
  • the Gamma (Brazilian) variant (P.1) represented 3.9% of cases (four new cases were detected, compared to zero cases the previous week);
  • the Beta (South African) variant (B.1.351) represented 1.0% of cases (one new case was detected).

Since the appearance of the Delta variant in Luxembourg, exponential development from week to week has been observed. However, this development was interrupted in the week of 7 to 13 June, with a 40% reduction in Delta cases (from 56 to 34) over one week. The greater reduction in the number of cases in the other variants resulted in an increase in the proportion of Delta cases (up from 31% to 35% over one week).

Wastewater monitoring 

The level of contamination of the thirteen sampled wastewater treatment plants studied by LIST has shown a constant downward trend in recent weeks and continues to decline. A similar trend was observed at the level of individual treatment plants, some of which showed contamination levels close to or even lower than the detection limits. Analyses in the coming weeks should confirm this result.