According to the Health Board's weekly overview (link in Estonian), the 14-day infection rate remained stable in Järva County and was in a downward trend in Ida-Viru County, but increased 30 percent on average in the remaining 13 counties.

The 14-day infection rate per 100,000 people is still in a significant increase and was at 912.88, as of Wednesday morning, up from 667.51 the week prior.

The R infection rate, which means the average number of people one infected person infects, has reached 1.2 and is now increasing in all regions. In relation to the increasing number of infected people, the number of vaccinated people has increased among infected people with the rates having equalized over the previous week.

Average age of hospitalized patients remains stable

The Health Board estimates there to be at least 9,000 infections this week with infection rates set to grow even further.

The risk matrix, which places a higher emphasis on hospitalizations, states that Estonia's current risk level is "orange" or "high" with a significant increase expected next week, which would place Estonia in the "red" or "very high" level.

Unvaccinated people make up most of the hospitalizations and deaths

As of January 3, the average age of hospitalized patients was 68. The rate of hospitalized patients aged 60 and up has decreased from 79.2 percent to 75.4 percent. There were 192 patients hospitalized last week, up from 180 the week prior.

There were 23 deaths last week, involving people aged 61-96. The average age of the deaths was 79.8 years. Of the 23 deaths, 18 people were unvaccinated and one person was half-way through their vaccination process.

The remaining four people were all vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine.

Omicron cases make up two thirds of all infections

Last week, the number of Omicron variant cases made up about 71 percent (up from 45 percent the week prior) of all genotyped samples. 90 percent of the Omicron cases have happened after local spread. 43 percent of the cases are linked to different outbreaks in Tartu County, 39 percent of the cases are linked to Harju County.

There were 498 cases linked to travel (up from 346 the week prior), making up 10.2 percent of all cases to have source data. The rate of coronavirus cases linked to travel has increased over the last few weeks.

Cases were linked back to 37 different countries, 172 cases were linked to Finland, 41 cases to Egypt, 38 to the U.K. and 37 to Sweden. More than 10 cases were also linked back to travel from Spain, Italy, the U.S., Tanzania and France.

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