Covid hospital cases up for 5th day straight; Nearly 6,500 active Covid-19 cases in Netherlands

There were eight more people being treated for Covid-19 in Dutch hospitals on Tuesday, the fifth consecutive increase since Friday, patient coordination office LCPS said. On that day, the hospital total had dropped down to 88, its lowest total since early March. On Tuesday, that figure stood at 105.

The news was released on the same day that a weekly report from public health agency RIVM showed that the number of infections in the Netherlands rose significantly compared to the previous week. It raised fears that not enough people in the country were taking precautions to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for respiratory disease Covid-19. It led to talk among medical experts of a possible need for new restrictions on society to keep the spread of the coronavirus under control.

Simultaneously, data from the RIVM released separately on Tuesday showed that 6,479 people had an active infection of the novel coronavirus on July 17. That figure was 2.4 times higher than the dashboard showed a day earlier. A significant percentage of new SARS-CoV-2 cases were attributed to local clusters of outbreaks, tied to households, workplaces, and increasingly, parties and visits with friends, the RIVM said.

"The number of COVID patients in Dutch hospitals is still stable, despite the local infection outbreaks," said acute care leader Ernst Kuipers on Tuesday.

Of the 105 people with Covid-19 in Dutch hospitals, 15 were in intensive care, a decrease of one. The other departments were treating 90 people, an increase of nine.

To date, 2,931 people have been treated in intensive care for the coronavirus disease. Of that total, 867 people have died, and 1,885 were treated and released from the hospital.