New Covid record set with over 75,000 infections; Hospital total up 6% in a week

Some 75,199 people tested positive for Covid-19 between Saturday and Sunday morning, the RIVM said. That topped the previous single-day record, set on January 28, by about a thousand. With over half of people tested by the GGD receiving a positive diagnosis, the IT systems of the health services have remained overwhelmed, and a large amount of infections have not been tabulated.

A record-setting 52.2 percent of those tested by the GGD from January 22-28 were infected with the coronavirus, including 58.1 percent tested on Friday. The GGD tested a record high 1.02 million samples during that time, meaning the GGD alone diagnosed about 534 thousand new infections those days. A total of 1.2 million infections were revealed since January 1.

Roughly 131,000 infections diagnosed over the past 13 days have not yet been counted as a result of issues with the computer infrastructure, the RIVM said. That was 9,000 higher than on Saturday. It remains unclear how effective the organizations’ efforts have been. All that is known is that the problem has worsened every day for since the technical issue was first reported.

The seven day moving average increased to set another new record on Sunday. Using only the official raw data, the average reached 61,581. That was a third higher compared to a week earlier. If all of the missing data were added to the latest data, the average would be 80,300, about 75 percent higher than last Sunday.

It also is not clear which regions have been most affected by the missing data, and thus municipal reporting fluctuated greatly the past two weeks. The three cities with the most new infections in Sunday’s data were Utrecht (4,297), Amsterdam (3,078), and The Hague (2,904). Utrecht’s daily total has varied wildly between 500 and 4,300 during the past two weeks.

With hospitalizations linked to Covid-19 firmly on the rise, the Dutch hospital system was treating 1,154 people with the disease on Sunday afternoon. That increased by six percent in a week. A similar increase would put the total back at 1,220.

There were 945 people with the disease in regular care wards, the most since January 14. That figure rose by 29 in a day after accounting for new admissions, discharges and deaths.

At the same time, the number of intensive care patients continued to fall. There were 209 people in ICU beds with the disease, a net decrease of four. It was the lowest total in the acute care wards since October 28, over three months ago.

Hospitals admitted 150 patients with Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, ten of whom were sent directly to intensive care units. That pushed the seven-day moving average up five percent to 155 new patient admissions per day. The figure rose by a third since last Sunday, and was at its highest point since January 4.

The past week, 1,008 Covid-19 patients were admitted into regular care units, up from 756 the week prior. Eighty others were sent to an intensive care unit, up from 68.