Five new Covid-19 deaths; Avg. daily hospital admissions falls slightly
Five more people diagnosed with Covid-19 died, raising the country's total number of deaths linked to the coronavirus disease to 6,095. The news was released by Dutch health agency RIVM just 24 hours after the Netherlands reported its first day with no new Covid-19 deaths since March 9.
Four of the newly-reported deaths took place on June 21, and one took place on June 4. So far, there were no known deaths linked to the illness on Saturday, June 20, and Monday, June 22, a detail which could change as the agency receives new data from medical professionals.
Three more people were also hospitalized this week for the respiratory illness, with hospitals having treated 11,853 people in total. The three-day average of new daily hospitalizations fell to 1.7, far short of the 40 daily admissions which could lead the government to reintroduce restrictions. Admissions to intensive care also averaged 1.3 over each of the last three days, a slight drop from Monday. Ten daily ICU admissions is considered cause for alarm, according to the Dutch government.
The RIVM also confirmed that 70 more people tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19. Some 49,722 people in the Netherlands have tested positive to date.
A total of 550,350 mucus swab tests have been carried out since the beginning of March. Over 34 percent of that total was handled since June 1, when testing was made more widely available to the public.