Dutch report no new Covid-19 deaths for first time in over 100 days
For the first time since March 9, public health agency RIVM reported no new deaths linked to respiratory illness Covid-19 in its daily accounting of statistics related to the coronavirus disease. The most up to date statistics on Monday added no Covid-19 patient deaths to the country's death toll, which stood at 6,090, and showed that not a single person in the Netherlands was known to have died from the illness between 12:01 a.m. on June 20 through 10 a.m. on June 22.
"We have been seeing a declining trend in infections for weeks, and that is certainly positive," a spokesperson for the Health Ministry told NL Times in reaction to the news. "The virus is still here. That is the way it is, and because of that we are very alert," the representative said. "We are also following developments every day mainly because everything is still opening slowly."
Despite this, it is still possible the deaths of patients could be added to those dates as the agency receives more data. In the past, the RIVM has used Tuesdays as the first opportunity to catch up on data that was delivered late due to the weekend. A spokesperson for the agency acknowledged this, telling NL Times that the numbers could also swing out of favor.
"It is not like we are in a celebratory mood. We are happy that the the trend is the way it is, but you have to continue following new developments," he said.
As of Monday, 11,851 people with Covid-19 have been hospitalized for treatment. This showed an increase of two patients compared to the previous day, one of which referred to a hospital admission on June 20, the other was a newly-discovered case from March 24, the RIVM said.
Since early March, some 542,288 mucus swab tests for the SARS-CoV-2 virus have been conducted in the country, with 49,658 having tested positive. That was an increase of 69 people.
The latest figures from the Dutch government's current situation report showed that still about 1,715 people are believed to be actively infected with the novel coronavirus responsible for Covid-19. Admissions to hospitals are down to about 4.7 per day, and admissions to intensive care units fell to about 2 per day.
The expanded testing available in the Netherlands to the public since June 1 showed on Monday that 0.5 people test positive for the virus per 100 thousand residents, and the reproduction rate of the virus is hovering at about 0.56, meaning it takes a little less than two infected people on average to transmit the virus to a third person.
