Covid-19 hospital total falls for 9th straight day; Lowest since Dec. 5

There were 1,618 people with Covid-19 in care on Wednesday, down four percent in a single day. The ninth consecutive decrease meant that hospitals in the Netherlands were treating the lowest number of Covid-19 patients in nearly 25 weeks.

There were 559 patients in intensive care units, a net decrease of 20 in a single day. That brought the figure in line with data from March 14, just over a third below the third wave peak reached a month ago.

Another 1,059 Covid-19 patients were being treated in regular care wards, a net decrease of 43. Non-acute cases have steadily fallen to levels not seen since before the second wave of hospitalizations in early October.

Just 108 people with the disease were hospitalized between Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon. That brought the moving daily average down to 135, which has dropped 32 percent in a week. The figure has decreased sharply since the start of the month, and was 57 percent lower than the third wave peak set in April.

Nearly 101 thousand Covid-19 vaccinations were given on Tuesday, according to Ministry of Health estimates. The seven-day average has slipped four days straight with the holiday weekend to 127,233. With that, the government also revised down its estimate for this calendar week to 1.01 million vaccines, roughly the same as last week.

To date, the RIVM estimates that 8,643,475 vaccines have been administered. About 72 percent of them were a person's first shot, though that includes some use of the Janssen vaccine which is a one-dose vaccine. The rest are two-dose vaccines, though Dutch guidelines call for only one shot to be given to people who have recently tested positive for the coronavirus infection.

The RIVM also said on Wednesday that people tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection another 2,794 times. That brought the moving average down to 3,384, not seen since October 3 before the second wave of infections

However, there were anomalies in Wednesday's data suggesting the possibility that not all positive tests were included in the figures. For example, only 57 new infections were found in Rotterdam, which has the highest average number of daily infections out of all municipailites, 194. Additionally, only six infections were discovered in Groningen, which has a daily average of 31.