Eight more deaths tied to Covid-19; Coronavirus reproduction rate shows improvement

The deaths of one person on Friday and five more people on Thursday were linked to respiratory illness Covid-19. The Dutch public health agency said on Saturday that eight more deaths in total were connected to the coronavirus disease, including one person who passed away on June 15 and another who died in April.

In total, 6,089 people in the Netherlands have died after becoming infected with the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus. Some 11,846 have been hospitalized with Covid-19 since the pandemic began, an increase of two.

Testing in the Netherlands over the past week was higher than average, with Tuesday through Thursday showing over 11 thousand mucus swab tests completed per day. Since testing began, 523,059 mucus swab tests had been completed as of Friday morning. New statistics about completed tests were likely to be released on Monday.

The new nests also uncovered 91 more infected people, which raised the Dutch total to 49,502. Meanwhile, the reproduction rate of the virus fell from 0.85 new infections per current infected person, down to 0.56, according to the Dutch government.

If that figure reaches 1.0 the government would be in a position to consider implementing another round of social distancing restrictions. Likewise, the number of new daily hospital admissions was at about four per day, roughly 90 percent below alarming levels, and new intensive care admissions was at about 3.3. That figure is 67 percent below a critical decision point.