Covid-19: ICU levels continue to fall, but some hospitals struggling

There were 410 patients from the Netherlands with Covid-19 being treated in intensive care on Thursday. The total was 22 fewer than the number of people in ICU on Wednesday, and it was the lowest total of Covid-19 patients there since March 20.

"The percentage decline continues to accelerate this week compared to the past three weeks," said Ernst Kuipers, who leads the acute care providers network in the country. "That is a good development. The released ICU capacity will be fully utilized for other care."

To date, 2,831 people have been treated in intensive care for the coronavirus disease, said intensive care nonprofit NICE. Of that total, 781 people have died, and 1,063 have been treated and released from hospital. At least 585 former ICU patients were being treated in other hospital departments on Thursday.

While the number of hospitalized coronavirus patients is decreasing and hospitals are steadily scaling up their regular healthcare, some hospitals are still having a harder time than others, according to a BNR survey of 13 large hospitals. Some hospitals are not prepared at all for regular care to be resumed on a large scale, others are doing better. But even in the best cases, the capacity for regular care is still around 50 percent of normal, according to the broadcaster.

The differences between the hospitals have to do with the fact that some regions still have more coronavirus patients than others. The Elisabeth Tweesteden Hospital in Tilburg, where the Netherlands' first diagnosed Covid-19 patient was hospitalized, still needs the largest part of its employees for coronavirus care, for example.