Fewer new corona cases and more hospital admissions

Fewer new corona cases and more hospital admissions

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Fewer and fewer people contract the coronavirus. In the past week, approximately 20,000 to 22,000 people in the Netherlands have probably tested positive. The pressure on healthcare continues to increase, the number of hospital admissions has continued to rise, although a tipping point may have been reached there as well.

The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) will again provide weekly figures on the state of the outbreak on Tuesday. Last week, the institute reported that 37,343 people had tested positive in the seven days before. That was 46 percent less than the previous week, when 69,731 people tested positive.

In the six days since the last update, 18,774 positive tests were registered, an average of 3129 per day. That could mean the weekly figure could come in somewhere between 21,000 and 22,000 Tuesday, which would be another drop of about 40 percent.

In the weekly update, RIVM also reports how many corona patients have been admitted to hospitals in the past week. That number may be around 700, up from 538 a week earlier. The number of new admissions has been a bit more stable in the last few days. The number of deaths reported in a week is likely to rise to about 30. Last week, RIVM reported 21 deaths and 14 the week before.

RIVM will also calculate the new reproduction number on Tuesday, which indicates how quickly the virus is spreading. That figure stood at 3 a few weeks ago, the highest level ever. Last Friday it had fallen to 0.7 and that is the lowest level in more than a year. At such a low number, the outbreak may slowly die down. The figure is always about the situation two weeks earlier, because more recent figures are not yet reliable enough.

RIVM also reports on Tuesday how many people were vaccinated against the corona virus last week. There are probably 850,000 to 900,000, which would be the lowest number since early May. More than 84 percent of adults have had at least a first injection, making the Netherlands one of the top in Europe.