More coronavirus patients caused a 20 percent cut in non-Covid care

Already about 20 percent of regular healthcare has been scaled down at hospitals in the Netherlands to make room for more coronavirus patients. There were 1,738 patients with Covid-19 in Dutch hospitals on Monday, a number which doubled three times since September 17.

The hospitals in different regions of the Netherlands have scaled down service based on the impact of the virus in their own area, said Ernst Kuipers, the head of the LNAZ, the Dutch acute care providers network.

Last week Kuipers told parliament that in the best case scenario, in which the current partial lockdown is effective and new infections fall, regular care will have to be scaled down by 40 percent. The worst case scenario is that only 25 percent of regular care is accommodated.

Monday's patient total was the result of seven days where the patient total grew by 4.3 percent daily. The LCPS said that 379 of the hospitalized patients were being treated in intensive care units, and 1,359 were being treated in other departments.

Kuipers said the ICU total will likely rise to 500 by the end of the month.

Air ambulance teams are again being used to help move coronavirus patients for the first time in months. Trauma helicopters were used during the first wave of Covid-19 patients, particularly to bring patients from the Netherlands to Germany.

"The first helicopters have already taken off to transport patients across the country more quickly," Kuipers said. A helicopter was used to take someone from the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam to the Twente Hospital in Almelo, and then the crew was going to pick up a patient in Zaandam to bring them to Groningen.

As of Monday, no patients had been taken to Germany during the second wave. From the springtime through May, at least 58 intensive care patients were taken to Germany. The last patient from the Netherlands being treated there died at the beginning of June.

Last week another 53,707 people in the Netherlands tested positive for the coronavirus, an increase of 38 percent compared to the week before. Over eight thousand more were diagnosed with the infection according to data from the RIVM on Monday.