Covid-19 in ICUs down slightly; Test results sometimes very delayed

With reporting by Jamie de Geir.

Hospitals in the Netherlands were treating 77 people with Covid-19 in their intensive care units on Thursday, a decrease of three, patient coordination office LCPS said. A third of intensive care units in the country now have no patients with the coronavirus disease at all.

Meanwhile, municipal health organization GGD has booked a 100 thousand appointments for members of the public to get tested for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus strain that leads to Covid-19. The GGD opened up a hotline for the public to request a test and book a reservation on June 1.

Sjaak de Gouw, who heads up the GGD, said that some patients will inadvertently have to wait longer than the GGD's 24-48 hour target to get their results. "We achieve that in about 96 percent of cases. It is certainly annoying for the four percent who have to wait so long. We are now also trying to solve those hiccups. It is and remains an enormous operation," he told NOS.

A spokesperson for the GGD told NL Times that in many cases the delay is because either the patient provided the wrong phone number, the employee wrote it down wrong, or simply bad timing. "Fifty thousand people were tested last week, and so if 1 or 2% [complain] on social media, that is a lot of people," the spokesperson said when pressed about the delays.

Delays were being resolved and were largely due to "startup problems," a spokesperson for GGD Zuidoost Brabant said.

Zojuist is de 100.000e testafspraak sinds 1 juni gemaakt bij de @GGDGHORNL. Met testen & traceren houden we het #coronavirus onder controle. Dus: bij klachten, blijf thuis en laat je testen. Maak een afspraak via 0800-1202. 👉 https://t.co/mCayzxjZfm pic.twitter.com/F9aSAbRqyi

— Hugo de Jonge (@hugodejonge) June 11, 2020