Second Covid-19 wave starting in Brabant, to spread over NL, hospital director says

The peak of the first wave of coronavirus infections in Noord-Brabant has just past, and the second wave is already beginning, according to Bart Berden, chairman of the board of the Elisabeth TweeSteden hospital in Tilburg and chairman of the regional consultative committee on acute care ROAZ in Noord-Brabant. And this wave will spread across the entire Netherlands, he said to the Volkskrant.

The ROAZ theory is that the first wave of Covid-19 infections in Noord-Brabant, the province hit hardest by the virus, was caused by Carnaval - large groups of people being very close together helped spread the virus in the province.

At the end of last week, the number of new coronavirus hospital admissions in the province started to decrease for a few days. Around 25 new, seriously ill patients were admitted to hospitals in Noord-Brabant during the first wave. That dropped to 15 on Friday, and 10 on Saturday, showing that the first major peak of the Carnaval wave was at its end, Berden said to the newspaper.

On Sunday, the number of new hospital admissions in Noord-Brabant spiked to 27. In total, there are now more than 120 coronavirus patients hospitalized in the province. At least 35 of them are in intensive care.

"It is certain that this wave will roll through the rest of the country," Berend said to the Volkskrant. "There is no doubt about that, and that wave is serious. The number of hospital admissions is now increasing in the rest of the country: in Limburg, in Gelderland, in Rotterdam. Also in the areas in Brabant that were not in the first peak. We don't know how intense that will be. The next few days will be crucial in this."

He also stressed that the decline in hospital admissions late last week were not related to measures taken last week. "People are wrong about this. It is too simple to think that a measure wil have an immediate effect the next day. We will only know what the new measures will do in about a week and a half."