Drop in weekly coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths
Nearly 148,000 people tested positive for the coronavirus in the past week. That is almost 5 percent fewer than in the preceding seven days. It is the first time since the end of September that the weekly figures from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) have fallen.
The institute emphasized that the number of infections is still "at a high level.” The RIVM registered 147,982 positive tests last week, compared to about 155,000 in the week before.
In addition, there was a decrease in the number of people who made an appointment to be tested at the GGD. Those locations performed more than 620,000 tests last week, compared to nearly 670,000 a week earlier. “This may be due to the fact that people with mild complaints who do not belong to a risk group and who do not work in healthcare can use a self-test. In the event of a positive self-test, it is important to have it confirmed at the GGD,” the RIVM noted. The institute said that fewer people reported Covid-like complaints using the website Infectieradar.nl.
“The percentage of positive tests remained virtually the same as the previous week at 21.3%,” the RIVM said in its report. “The number of positive tests decreased slightly in all age groups. The number of infections per 100,000 is still highest among children up to and including 12 years of age.”
When broken down by region, Limburg-Zuid was the region with the most per capita infections, with 1,183 positive tests per 100,000 residents. That was followed by Zeeland (1,097), Zuid-Holland-Zuid (1,042), Limburg-Noord (959) and Brabant-Noord (951).
The number of hospital admissions also decreased. In the past week, 1,998 people exhibited symptoms that were bad enough to warrant hospitalization in a regular care ward or an intensive care unit, according to data from intensive care monitor NICE. That is almost 7 percent less than a week earlier, when there were 2,145 hospitalizations, a figure which was revised upward by 149 as the statistics were finalized. Of the 1,998 admitted people, 343 were placed in an intensive care unit, compared to 375 a week earlier.
In the past week, the RIVM learned that 356 Covid-19 patients died as a result of the disease. That is also a decrease from a week earlier, when there were 367 such death reports. Most of those who died were 50 over older, but some of those who died were younger, including people in their twenties.
”Due to the long length of stay of patients with COVID-19, the pressure on hospitals remains very high, despite the number of new admissions to ICU and the nursing wards declining slightly over the past week,” the RIVM stated.
Vaccination status continued to play a role in hospitalizations during the first three weeks of November. “The chance of being hospitalized for Covid-19 as a fully vaccinated person is much smaller than for an unvaccinated person,” the RIVM noted. It said that 66 percent of all Covid-19 patients in intensive care were unvaccinated, and that 47 percent of those in regular care were unvaccinated.
When adjusted just to look at patients younger than 70 years of age, about 74 percent of ICU patients were not vaccinated against Covid-19, as were 66 percent of patients in regular care wards.
Figures from the LCPS also showed a 7 percent fall in hospitalizations, but from 2,420 down to 2,256. It also showed a steeper 15 percent decrease in intensive care admissions, from 334 to 285.
The basic reproduction (R) number dropped from 0.99 to 0.95. That is the lowest level since mid-September, before the start of the current wave. It indicates that the coronavirus has more difficulty infecting new people.
The R number of 0.95 indicates that 100 people infected with the virus passed it on to 95 others, who then spread the infection to 90 more.
The RIVM provides an update on the status of the epidemic every Tuesday. The most recent edition was the 75th weekly report produced by the organization.
Reporting by ANP and NL Times