Netherlands remains dark red on EU Covid map for sixth week

For the sixth week in a row, the Netherlands is completely dark red on the map reflecting coronavirus cases in Europe. That is the highest warning level on the map, which is updated every Thursday by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The total number of positive coronavirus tests is falling, also in comparison to other countries, but that decrease has not been fast enough in any of the 12 provinces to step down to a lower warning level.

Limburg had the most positive tests per capita in the Netherlands. In the past two calendar weeks, 18,773 inhabitants tested positive there, which is the equivalent of 1,680 out of every 100,000 inhabitants. This puts Limburg ninth out of all 211 European regions. Limburg was in fifth place last week. Zeeland improved from 8th to 11th place, Noord-Brabant went from 19th to 26th, and Friesland faired well, moving from 20th to 22nd place. This indicates that the situation in those provinces gotten better more quickly than in other places.

Groningen performed the best of all Dutch provinces, with 964 infections per capita. However, with a national positivity rate of over 14 percent, when also taking access testing into account, Groningen's infection total was still almost double what would be required to reduce its warning level from dark red to red.

The Danish capital of Copenhagen has become the area of greatest concern in Europe. More than 55,000 infections were detected there in the past two weeks, equivalent to almost 3,006 for every 100,000 inhabitants. That's a 48 percent increase from last week's data. The number of new cases is also rising rapidly in Oslo, Norway. Both countries have found a high number of infections caused by the new Omicron variant.

The number of infections is also rising in other places. In total, 153 regions are at the highest alert level, compared to 136 last week.

The RIVM provides its data about the Netherlands to the ECDC for the European agency's weekly update.The organization looks at the number of positive cases, and the percentage of tests with a positive result over the two previous calendar weeks. The new map uses figures from December 6 - 19. The European coronavirus map has four risk levels, which are ordered from best to worst using the colors green, orange, red, and dark red.

Per capita infections in the Netherlands, December 6 - 19, by province