Covid-19 hospital total hits 23-week low

The number of patients being treated for Covid-19 in the Netherlands fell to its lowest point since December 12. In total, there were 1,731 patients in hospitals being treated for the disease on Saturday afternoon, down five percent in a single day.

Intensive care units were handling 602 of the patients, down six since Friday bringing the total to its lowest number since March 20. The ICU total was 28 percent lower than the third wave peak set a month earlier.

In the regular hospital nursing wards, healthcare workers were treating 1,129 others for the coronavirus disease, a net decrease of 85. That is the lowest number of patients being treated in the regular hospital wards since October 13.

Combined, the hospital total of 1,731 reflected a 21 percent drop compared to a week earlier. Should that trend hold for another seven days, there will be fewer than 1,400 Covid-19 patients in care by next weekend.

Hospitals admitted a combined total of 163 new Covid-19 patients in the past day, including 24 which were sent to the ICU. That brought the seven-day moving average down to 172, nearly half as much as the third wave peak.

The Ministry of Health said an estimated 141,181 people were given a Covid-19 vaccine on Friday, slightly lower than the seven-day average of 145,712. That pushed the total for the calendar week up to 733,007, with an estimated 8,181,911 vaccines administered since the inoculation program began in January.

The Netherlands was on pace to vaccinate over a million people in a single calendar week for the first time and updated its weekly projection to reflect that. On Saturday, the RIVM announced that vaccinations could begin for healthy people born in 1967 and 1968 who live at home.

The RIVM reported on Saturday that 3,221 more people tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. The seven-day rolling average fell 4 percent on the news to 4,219. The moving average dropped by 28 percent in a week, with coronavirus infection numbers having remained below five thousand since Wednesday.

The cities with the highest coronavirus infection numbers on Saturday were Rotterdam (237), Den Haag (148) and Amsterdam(142).

People in the Netherlands have tested positive for the coronavirus a total of 1,622,810 times since the start of the pandemic.