Over 11,000 Covid patients treated with oxygen at home

Over 11,000 seriously ill coronavirus patients were treated with oxygen at home during the pandemic. They were not included in the hospital figures, which means the pandemic hit the Netherlands even harder than the official figures show, AD reports.

Figures AD got from the Dutch Industry Association for Medical Technolgy (FHI) showed that 11,200 patients had oxygen supplies at home during the past 16 months of the pandemic. The total number of home patients is likely several thousand higher because the newspaper could not get figures for the first eight months of the pandemic.

Currently, about 1,760 Covid-19 patients are at home with oxygen.

On Friday, the industry association of pulmonologists will call on hospitals to treat more coronavirus patients at home. When the Delta variant of the coronavirus was dominant, the average hospital stay for a Covid-19 patient was nine days. "We see that it is now four to five days with Omicron. We want to try to reduce that to three days with home treatment," chairman Leon van den Toorn said to AD.

A spokesperson for Public Health Minister Ernst Kuipers told AD that the Ministry "welcomes it" that more patients are treated at home. According to the spokesperson, it is more pleasant for the patient and creates more space in the hospitals.