More than 1,100 people in Costa Rica are hospitalized with Covid-19, a new record, the Health Ministry said in its Wednesday evening update.
Of those 1,123 hospitalized patients, 405 are in an ICU bed, nearly saturating Costa Rica’s national capacity in its public-health system. The public system has about 400 available ICU beds, while private health centers add at least a dozen others.
The country confirmed 2,555 new cases on Wednesday, continuing a streak of elevated case counts that began in mid-April.
A study by the National Reference Lab (INCIENSA) of 325 samples showed 12% correspond to the British, South African or Brazilian variants of the coronavirus.
Sixteen people died on Wednesday related to Covid-19. Costa Rica has already recorded 95 such deaths in May. For context, respiratory viruses killed 23 people in Costa Rica in all of 2018.
