Covid hospital admissions hit 48-day high; Patient total rises 8% since Monday

Hospitals in the Netherlands admitted 256 patients with the coronavirus disease between Monday and Tuesday afternoon. That was the highest total since December 15, nearly seven weeks ago.

The regular care wards took on 237 new Covid-19 patients, and 19 others were sent to intensive care. Combined, it pushed the seven-day admissions average up nine percent. Hospitals admitted 171 new patients each of the past seven days, on average, the most since January 2.

For the second day in a row, the number of Covid-19 patients in treatment jumped by eight percent. That brought the hospitalized total to 1,343, its highest point since January 13, according to figures from the LCPS. The hospital total has gone up by 15 percent in a week, the biggest seven-day increase since the end of November. If repeated for a second week, the hospitalized total would top 1,550.

There were 1,137 patients in regular care wards, a net increase of 102 after accounting for new admissions, discharges, and deaths. The other 206 patients were in intensive care units, a net decrease of six.

Meanwhile, the RIVM said that it registered another 105,840 positive coronavirus tests between Monday and Tuesday morning. That was the second-highest total in a given day, though it was about 6,500 lower than Monday's total.

With over 50 percent of people now testing positive for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, information systems used by the GGD were overwhelmed the past two weeks. This led to a backlog of tens of thousands of infections counted late, or not at all, in data compiled by the RIVM. However, the organizations are catching up on the backlog. At its peak, there were 131,000 infections not yet registered on Sunday. That figure fell to 81,000 on Tuesday.

The latest official data pushed the seven-day moving average up to 75,744, based solely on raw data. That was about 45 percent higher compared to the previous seven-day period. A combination of raw and corrected data put the figure at 75,716.

About 56.1 percent of those tested the last calendar week received a positive diagnosis for the coronavirus infection, including 61.7 percent who tested positive on Sunday. During that time, a record 145,642 people were tested daily by the GGD on average. The daily positivity rate has frequently broken records since the start of the year.

The three cities reporting the most new infections on Tuesday were Amsterdam (3,947), Enschede (3,798), and Utrecht (2,709). In a sign that the data still included information being caught up from previous days, Enschede's total was more than the previous eight days combined.