Netherlands expected to fully turn Dark Red on EU Covid map for first time

Drenthe and Groningen are expected to be placed at the highest coronavirus warning level in Europe. They were the last remaining provinces to be at a lower risk level, but the whole of the Netherlands will be dark red on the European Union’s coronavirus map from Thursday. The country has never been entirely dark red, with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) having added its most severe level in late January.

Limburg will set a new Dutch record in the dataset used to make the map. More than 15,600 residents tested positive for the coronavirus in the past two weeks. That amounts to almost 1,400 cases per 100,000 residents, or one in every 71 Limburgers. In December last year, Limburg had 1,143.1 positive tests per 100,000 inhabitants in two weeks. That is the current Dutch record likely to be broken with the ECDC update.

Although Groningen has the least per capita infections of the 12 Dutch provinces, it too will be past the threshold for the ECDC’s harshest warning. In the past two calendar weeks, about 526 out of every 100,000 people there tested positive.

Noord-Holland is rising the fastest of all provinces. The number of positive tests is almost 48 percent higher than reflected in the current map, which was released last Thursday.

The coronavirus map is revised every Thursday by the ECDC, the European health service for which the RIVM, the Dutch health agency, is a member. The ECDC examines the number of positive tests and the rate in which people test positive over the course of the two previous calendar weeks. The European coronavirus map has four colors. From lowest risk level to highest, the colors used are green, orange, red and dark red.