Covid hospitalizations to reach 2,000 by end November

The total number of coronavirus patients in hospitals will rise to about 2,000 in the coming weeks. Now hospitals are treating just over 1,300 people for Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus. The number of coronavirus patients in ICU will increase from about 250 to about 500 in the coming weeks.

Ernst Kuipers, chairman of the National Acute Care Network (LNAZ) and director of the Erasmus MC hospital in Rotterdam, shared this calculation with parliament on Wednesday. "That's the peak that was predicted to be reached in January. We will reach it in November," said Kuipers.

According to Kuipers, the increase in hospital occupancy is the same as last year, but with a three-week delay. "It's copy-paste exactly the same. What we now see on 1 November happened on 12 October last year."

It is now certain how the hospital occupancy will develop. In the most favorable scenario, the number of admitted patients will start to fall again at the end of November. But if the worst-case calculations come true, over 4,000 coronavirus patients will be in hospitals in December, RIVM director Jaap van Dissel told the parliamentarians. That would be the highest number since April last year, during the first wave of the outbreak. Then regular care was stopped entirely to be able to care for the coronavirus patients.

Kuipers defended the vaccinations. "They work strongly. You could calmly defend the statement that if everyone in the Netherlands had been vaccinated, more than a thousand of the current 1,300 admitted patients would not have been in hospital. Then 250 people would have been in hospitals, there would be nothing going on, and we wouldn't have had to spread them around."