No Covid-19 deaths reported for first time since Sept. 7; Vaccinations total tops 15 million
There were no Covid-19 deaths reported to the RIVM during the 24 hours ending at 10 a.m. on Saturday. That was the first time the public health agency was not notified of a death caused by the disease since September 7, 2020.
Not all Covid-19 fatal cases are reported to the RIVM, and notifications are not necessarily made on the same day a death occurs. Typically, the figures trend down due to weekend working hours, which is usually noticed in data reported on Sundays and Mondays.
Additionally, it is not obligatory for death reports to be filed with the RIVM. The agency knows of 17,740 deaths where Covid-19 was the cause, but the country’s national statistics bureau CBS has been notified of an additional 12 thousand since the pandemic began.
Still, the milestone signifies another important step after over two months of improving hospitalization and infection data. The RIVM was notified of just 2 deaths daily on average this week. A month ago, that figure was 12. At the end of April the RIVM was disclosing an average of 18 deaths per day.
The Netherlands was set to administer the 15 millionth Covid-19 vaccine jab on Saturday, Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said. Over 216 thousand jabs were given on Friday, which brought the total up to 14,896,699 since the vaccination program started in January.
That was the most injections given in a single day in almost two weeks. It brought the seven-day average up to 203,493. Just over a million jabs have been administered this calendar week, with nearly 1.5 million expected through Sunday.
The RIVM also said that another 569 people tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection, which pulled the moving average down to 667. That was similar to figures during the first week of September.
The three cities with the most new infections were Amsterdam (33), Rotterdam (33) and The Hague (21). All three were between 17 and 20 percent below their respective seven day averages.
To date, people have tested positive for the infection 1,682,773 times.
No new data about Covid-19 hospitalizations was expected to be released by the LCPS on Saturday, which has stopped reporting data on weekends for the time being. There were 363 people in care on Friday, including 147 patients in an ICU.