The growth of corona infections in the Netherlands has flattened further. The number of new hospital admissions also remained low. The dreaded second wave is therefore not yet happening.
This is evident from the corona figures from the RIVM until Sunday 16 August. The same figures show that the Leiden region is not an island: after the surprising decline last week, the number of new cases here has now doubled to 46. Calculated per inhabitant, our region is now close to the national average again, but it is still better than other parts of the Randstad.
As in the last three weeks, most infections in the region were again caused by Leiden (33). Leiderdorp and Voorschoten each counted 5, Oegstgeest 2, and Zoeterwoude 1. There was one cluster of infections last week. That was with it nursing home Overrhijn from Topaz. There, three units had to be quarantined because of those infections.
Warnings
Two weeks ago things looked more bleak. The national number of infections had doubled in one week. Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Minister Hugo de Jonge decided to address the people for the first time in a long time: keeping their distance remained necessary – at terraces, camping sites and family parties. And Diederik Gommers and Eric Kuipers, the two faces of acute care, also issued warnings: if the trend continued like this, hospitals would already be full in September.
Perhaps those warnings have had an impact after all. On August 11, five days after the press conference of Rutte and De Jonge, the number of new infections peaked with a number of 779 in one day. That number has not been surpassed since then. Today the three-day average even dropped below six hundred for the first time in six days.
On a weekly basis there is still an increase, from 3393 to 4438 new infections: an increase of 31 percent. A week earlier, that growth was 58 percent and the week before it was even more than ninety percent. There may be days with higher numbers again, but the strongest increase is out for the time being.
Amsterdam, Gouda
The increase in infections also clearly leveled off in the two largest cities, where a mask is now mandatory in busy streets. Rotterdam showed only a ten percent increase with 666 cases. In Amsterdam, the number of 805 positive tests was a quarter higher than the previous week.
Within our GGD region, Hollands Midden, Gouda has been the municipality with the most new corona cases for three weeks. The last week there were 62, but that was seven less than the previous week. Here too, the sharp rise seems to have stopped.
Hospital admissions
The number of hospital admissions is now even lower than in March and April. Nationally there are now an average of 8 per day. In April there were dozens more. If infections continued to double weekly, it could be dozens again in early September. But due to the leveling off of new infections, this pressure can be delayed for longer.
In the past week, two people from our GGD region were admitted to hospital: one from Teylingen and one from Leiden. One Leiden patient has also died.
The research for this report was made possible in part by the Leids Mediafonds
