If the number of coronavirus infections continues to increase in the course of next week, additional measures will have to be taken earlier than in three weeks. That said Ernst Kuipers, chairman of the National Network Acute Care (LNAZ), Thursday afternoon.
On Monday evening, Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Minister Hugo de Jonge (Public Health) announced that the extra measures will apply for at least three weeks and that it will then be examined whether the package of measures can be eased or whether it is necessary to make it more stringent.
Kuipers does not think that this should be waited for three weeks. “If there is a clear deterioration in the meantime, you don’t have to wait three weeks,” he said. “It is really wise to look again: where are we going and where should additional measures be taken?”
On Thursday, the number of corona patients in the hospital fell slightly. A total of 691 corona patients are in hospital. That is ten less than Wednesday.
The slight decrease in the number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital is due to a decrease of twelve patients in intensive care (ic). In the other wards of Dutch hospitals, the number of patients infected with corona rose slightly.
‘Good news, but it is a daily course’
Kuipers spoke of “good news”, but does not attach too much importance to the slight decrease for now. “We are dealing with day rates,” he said. “The number of COVID-19 patients is expected to continue to rise.”
A total of 763 patients are currently in the ICU, including the patients who are not infected with the corona virus.
The number of non-corona patients in the ICU is still considerably lower than is normally the case, and this is a cause for concern for Kuipers. However, he does not have a really clear explanation for this.
“It is amazing that it takes so long for the IC occupancy to be up to standard. In mid-April I would have said that it would be up to scratch within two months.”
According to the LNAZ chairman, the relatively low IC occupancy means that at some point a group of patients turns up who have not received the care they needed. According to him, it is being investigated which group it is exactly, “but the impact will be significant”.
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