Dutch Covid hospital patient total shows first weekly drop in a month

Hospitals in the Netherlands were treating 1,626 people with Covid-19 on Tuesday afternoon. That was 2 percent fewer than a week earlier, according to the LCPS, which also accounted for new admissions, discharges, and deaths. It was the first weekly drop in the active patient total in nearly a month.

Still, the current hospital total rose by a net total of 15 compared to the previous day. It was the second consecutive increase. The patient total included 171 people in intensive care units. Despite the net increase of five, the ICU level remained near a four-month low. The other 1,455 people were in regular care units, a net increase of ten.

Hospitals admitted 197 people with Covid-19 between Monday and Tuesday afternoon. That was the highest daily total in a week. It brought the seven-day average to 180. That fell by 11 percent compared to a week earlier, though ICU admissions rose slightly.

Some 34,683 positive coronavirus tests were registered by the RIVM between Monday and Tuesday morning, the fourth straight day the total was below 40,000. That brought the seven-day moving average down to 44,323 based on raw data, or 44,306 with some corrected figures mixed in. That marked a 37 percent reduction.

The results were likely to be the last day where figures could be lower because GGD locations did not maintain their regular testing hours during the recent storms that struck the Netherlands. The extent of the impact was not immediately clear, but there was a 38 percent decrease in the number of tests conducted last week. "There were people who didn't get tested because of the weather, but many of them could do so on another day," a spokesperson for the RIVM told Nu.nl.

The positivity rate did rise to 58.3 percent during the last calendar week, according to figures from the GGD and the RIVM. About 74,200 people were tested each day that week.

The three cities with the most new infections in Tuesday's data were Amsterdam (1,322), The Hague (1,032), and Rotterdam (787). Figures from both Amsterdam and Rotterdam were both about one-fourth below average, while The Hague's total was in line with its moving average.