Peak of second Covid wave may be in sight: Public health institute

After a week of record-high coronavirus infections in the Netherlands, public health institute RIVM is cautiously seeing some spots for optimism. The peak of the second wave of Covid-19 infections seems to be coming into sight, RIVM modeller Jacco Walliinga said to newspaper AD.

On Tuesday the RIVM reported over 10 thousand new infections for the third consecutive day. Last week a record 67 thousand people tested positive for Covid-19. But the explosive increases in infections seems to be behind us, Wallinga said.

"It looks like we are approaching the peak of the second wave," he said to AD. While 10 thousand new infections a day is a whole lot, it is also stable. The number of ICU admissions has been fluctuating between 40 and 50 per day. That is also a lot, and causing capacity problems, but also stable.

In addition, the number of people who fell ill last week also seems to have decreased somewhat compared to the weeks before. People don't always get tested immediately after they start showing symptoms, but often only after the symptoms persisted for a few days. The GGDs always ask when symptoms first appeared. So some of last week's positive tests actually fell ill the week before already.

The reproduction factor R, the number of people an infected person infects, is also falling towards one. "It is still slightly above, according to our estimate now," Wallinga said. Once that figure is below one, the number of infections will decrease.

"But I want to warn against too quick conclusions," Wallinga added. "The bad thing about these days is: we suspect that we will reach the peak, but you can only really conclude that when you are over it and the numbers really drop. I hope and expect that we can say that this weekend or shortly after."