The decision was communicated Saturday of last week, with the rationale that it would “allow the hospital and monitoring teams a rest period.” In fact, no numbers were published the Sunday prior to that either, due to IT systems maintenance.
In short, today will be the third Sunday on which we will not get any new data on Covid-19 infections in Luxembourg.
On the face of it, it’s absolutely fair that hospital and monitoring personnel get a day off - but then, it’s not like the tests aren’t carried out. The update that was previously published on Sunday reflects test results established on the Saturday prior, and those are still being processed.
The only real difference in terms of data availability is (1) that we now get the data on Mondays, and (2) that the data is slightly more difficult to extract. The reason for (2) is that the government doesn’t publish the daily PDF reports on weekends, which means that the numbers can only be seen through their graphs. If you take a look at said graphs, you may notice that they are not always particularly easy to read. Try seeing how many new confirmed infections there were on 1 April, for example. It’s fiddly.
So, while not as easy to extract, the data is eventually made available. That leads to the question of communicating it. On weekends, the government has previously done (and still does, on Saturdays) this by updating a few numbers on covid19.lu: the number of tests, the number of positive tests, hospitalisations, and more recently vaccinations, etc.
Media, including us, tend to do a daily article with this information as well. This is no longer possible on Sundays, which means that the Saturday data has been overlooked - this week by us, but also by other media outlets.
On Monday of this week, 54 cases were recorded and communicated. What you are less likely to have seen is that 204 cases were confirmed on 3 April, and would have previously been communicated on Sunday 4 April. One week prior, when Sunday numbers were not published due to IT systems maintenance, several media outlets the following Monday reported 26 cases - and that was correct, as it was how many had been discovered the day prior. What was missing, again, were 292 new cases confirmed on the Saturday but only published through the graphs on covid19.lu.
There is an argument to be made that we, the public, don’t actually need a daily update. It takes a certain mental toll to be constantly reminded of the virus, inescapable as its presence is. Equally, one could argue that having grown accustomed to these updates, the seeming drop in cases - 204 and 292 cases that many of us never heard of - may lead to the false belief that the situation has improved more than it actually has, which could trigger unwarranted behavioural changes and lead to riskier decisions.
Where do you come down on this question? Let us know in the poll below, or in the comments if there isn’t an option that accurately reflects your position.
