New data shows more than 86,600 positive coronavirus tests since Tuesday

More than 86,600 positive coronavirus tests were recorded by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) between Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning. The institute reported this after an additional audit of its data. Earlier, the RIVM reported 144,586 new cases, but that number turned out to be incorrect and was soon withdrawn.

The corrected figure is similar to revised data from the past week. An average of 86,933 people tested positive every day during the February 2-8 period, according to information the RIVM released on Tuesday.

Many tens of thousands of confirmed infections were likely counted twice, making the first figure too high. This may be because RIVM has a new way of collecting data. Positive results from coronavirus tests now go directly to RIVM, and are not first passed through several systems organized by the GGD. This should prevent the system from crashing in the future, which cause backlogs to occur. On Tuesday, the RIVM recorded over 300,000 positive tests from a backlog dating as far back as January 17.

Tuesday's high figure was initially revised from 394,759 to 336,692, but has now been corrected to 394,674. In the past seven days, 844,766 positive tests were registered, including the three-week backlog, for an average of 120,681 per day. This remained roughly the same in the new calculation.

In the past week, RIVM registered 51 deaths from Covid-19, an average of about seven a day. That is the lowest level since October 22. It includes seven people whose deaths were registered on Wednesday. It concerns residents of Amsterdam, The Hague, Groningen, Haarlem, Breda and the municipality of Dijk en Waard, and someone from the Twente region whose place of residence is unknown.

The new reporting of these deaths does not mean that they died in the past day. In addition, the actual number of deaths may be higher, as it is not mandatory to inform the RIVM that a Covid-19 patient died from the disease.