The number of new corona cases is no longer falling as quickly as in previous weeks. Only slightly fewer positive tests have been registered in the past week than in the week before. The decline appears to be leveling off.
The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) will again provide weekly figures on the state of the outbreak on Tuesday. In the six days since the last update, 15,881 positive tests were registered, an average of almost 2650 per day. This means that the weekly figure could be between 18,000 and 19,000 on Tuesday. That would be a 10 to 15 percent drop from last week.
The current corona wave peaked in mid-July. In a week there were almost 70,000 positive tests. A week later, that had almost halved to more than 37,000. Last week, it almost halved again, to just over 21,000.
Reproduction number
RIVM also reports how many corona patients have been admitted to hospitals in the past week. That number appears to be decreasing further. Last week, the service reported 541 new admissions in a week, slightly lower than the week before. The peak seems to have been reached, the RIVM stated at the time. The number of deaths reported in a week is still rising. That is likely to be around 40, the highest level in about two months. Last week, RIVM reported 28 deaths and 21 the week before.
RIVM will also calculate the new reproduction number on Tuesday, which indicates how quickly the virus is spreading. It has been hovering around 0.7 for a while now. Such a low number indicates that the virus is finding it increasingly difficult to infect new people. The outbreak can then slowly extinguish. At the beginning of July, the reproduction number was at 3, the highest level ever. The figure is always about the situation two weeks earlier, because more recent figures are not yet reliable enough.
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