Dutch Covid hospital total hits 16-week high

Hospitals in the Netherlands were treating 2,704 people with Covid-19 on Thursday, the highest total since January 7. Including the four percent increase reported on Thursday, the total has gone up for five days straight, data from the LCPS showed.

There were 1,891 patients with disease being treated in nursing wards, a net increase of 94. The other 813 people were in intensive care units, a net decrease of one.

Dutch ICUs have had over 800 Covid-19 patients in care for 13 straight days. The ICU system admitted 42 people with the coronavirus disease between the afternoons of Wednesday and Thursday. Other hospital departments took on 296 others.

Public health agency RIVM said on Thursday that another 7,344 people tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Preliminary data shows that the number of people getting tested this week has fallen again, but the rate in which they test positive has gone up.

Thursday's total brought the seven-day moving average down to 7,597, the lowest it has been since April 16. However, that week-long period includes Monday and Tuesday, days in which an IT outage affected data reporting, the RIVM said.

This calendar week some 27,687 people have tested positive for the infection, down 14 percent from last week.

The three cities with the most new infections reported on Thursday were Rotterdam (386), The Hague (281), and Amsterdam (258).

To date, people in the Netherlands have tested positive for the infection 1,488,594 times. That includes 17,124 deaths from Covid-19 reported to the RIVM, though data from the national statistics office showed that figure was likely much higher.