546 coronavirus patients in hospital ICU’s; "Few" beds available

A total of 546 patients with coronavirus Covid-19 are currently being treated in intensive care units in the Netherlands, according to the latest figures from intensive care association NVIC. The number of patients rose by 20 percent on Monday and 12 percent on Tuesday, resulting in the number of available beds dropping from "sufficient" to "few".

NVIC chairman Diederik Gommers told RTL Nieuws that they are taking tings day by day. "I can't look into a crystal ball," he said. "If 30 new patients are added tomorrow I will be a happy man. If that is 80 tomorrow, I will be somber."

The problem is that it takes people with Covid-19 a long time to recover to such an extent that they can be moved out of ICU. "Sometimes three weeks. So new places have to be created every time we take in people," Gommers said. "We have all kinds of plans and are ready to scale up. If we receive the message to scale up, we will move on to the next phase. But scaling up again will make things stressful."

On Tuesday between 90 and 100 patients from ICUs in Noord-Brabant were transferred to hospitals in the rest of the country, RTL reports based on figures from the Regional Consultancy on the Acute Care Chain. This brings the number of transferred patients to between 310 and 320.

Noord-Brabant is the province most affected by the virus with 1,739 of the total 5,560 Covid-19 patients in the Netherlands, according to RIVM figures from Tuesday.

The Elkerliek hospital in Helmond told Eindhovens Dagblad that they admitted new Covid-19 patients into its ICU on Tuesday, but also transferred people. "So everything is still under control here." The Catharina Hospital in Eindhoven told the newspaper much the same. "We transferred many patients today, but we see that many new patients are also being added. We are still in control." The St. Anna hospital in Geldrop and the Maxima MC in Eindhoven gave similar responses.