RIVM: Weekly Covid hospital figures do not justify new lockdown easing

Public health agency RIVM cited data from intensive care foundation NICE to claim a 22 percent decrease in weekly Covid-19 hospitalizations. "Even though the number of hospital admissions has decreased this week, there is still no sign of the decrease desired by the OMT," the RIVM said in a statement referring to the Outbreak Management Team.

The OMT said on May 2 that it wanted to see a 20-percent fall in daily hospitalizations connected to the disease. Data from the LCPS on Tuesday showed a 16 percent overall fall in Covid-19 hospital admissions since that date.

For the seven days ending at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, NICE said some 1,379 people were admitted into regular care, and 304 others into intensive care. Both of those figures reflected a 22 percent decline.

"The pressure on hospitals from COVID-19 patients is still very high even with these numbers," the RIVM said.

There was a sharp 28 percent decrease in hospitalizations among people aged 60 to 79. The RIVM attributed this to the vaccination program. "It is the first time since the start of the epidemic that more people under the age of 40 have been hospitalized with Covid-19 than people over the age of 80."

Over the past week, the percentage of people who tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus after scheduling their own test rose for the eighth straight week. This time, that figure rose from 11.7 to 12.3 percent, the highest it has been since early January.

The figure rose up as the number of tests run by the GGD plunged 12 percent over the past seven days to 354,085. "The number of tests taken at the GGD's testing [centers] seems to have been influenced by the May holidays," the RIVM stated.

A total of 47,109 people tested positive for the coronavirus infection over the past week, an 11 percent drop. That includes people tested at other locations not run by the GGD.

Only those aged 18-24 saw a per capita increase in infection rate, while the rate of those from 13-17 remained level. All other age groups saw a decrease with a 30 percent drop of those aged 0 to 12, which was also the group tested the least last week.

The RIVM said its model showed that the basic reproduction (R) number rose to 1.01 on April 26. That means that 100 people contagious with the virus infected 101 others.

With the May holiday period and the decrease in testing, the accuracy of the RIVM models for contagious persons was questionable. The estimated number of people contagious with the coronavirus infection fell by a substantial 21 percent to 188 thousand on May 3.

The RIVM also said that 164 more deaths tied to Covid-19 were reported to the agency, a 28 percent increase. However, such deaths are not required to be reported to the RIVM, but do have to be reported to the CBS. That organization estimated that there were at least ten thousand more coronavirus deaths than the 17,383 the RIVM has registered.

To date, people have tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus a total of 1,571,398 times.