More than 10 percent of hospital beds in the Netherlands are currently occupied by corona patients, says chairman Ernst Kuipers of the National Acute Care Network (LNAZ) Thursday afternoon. In intensive care (ic), almost half of the available beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients.
In total, more than two thousand people infected with the corona virus will be in hospital on Thursday. There are 1,540 in the nursing wards and 463 in the ICs.
Dutch hospitals have a total of 11,000 nursing care beds and 1,150 ic beds.
In the past 24 hours, 238 corona patients ended up on a nursing ward. Another 56 patients required IC care.
In order to handle the large influx of COVID-19 patients, Dutch patients will probably be moved to German ICs from Friday.
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Dutch corona patients will probably be brought to ICs in Germany again on Friday. (Photo: ANP)
‘The increase will continue for the time being’
Kuipers says he fears that the increase will continue for the time being. “The first prediction is until the end of this month. What happens next will depend on the impact of the measures.”
In mid-September, the LNAZ predicted that on October 31, more than 500 corona patients would be in the ICUs and about two thousand in the clinics (nursing ward). “If you look at the numbers now, we are slightly above that prediction in terms of the number of IC patients and the number of patients in the clinic is on the line of the prediction.”
Tsunami to corona patients
“What we look at with care is the pressure that continues,” says Kuipers. “A colleague recently compared the first wave with a tidal wave. It has a very high wave front, but then subsides. That takes a long time, but it does subside.”
“Now it is much more the image of a tsunami”, the LNAZ chairman explains. “The wave front that is coming your way is not nearly that high at first. But the water pressure that comes after it goes on and on and on. That’s what we see now. The number of patients is increasing from the beginning of September and we are now going to towards the end of October and we have definitely not reached the end yet. “
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