Positive Covid continues to fall as fewer people get tested

The number of positive coronavirus tests fell again last week. The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) registered 10,596 between Tuesday morning last week and Tuesday morning this week. In the seven days before that, the weekly total was 16,054 positive tests.

Fewer and fewer people are getting tested at the GGD. In the week of March 21, over 331,000 went to a GGD test location. A month later, in the week of April 18, that dropped to nearly 25,000. Since April 11, the government dropped the advice to get a positive self-test confirmed by the GGD. In the past week, the GGDs did 16,130 Covid-19 tests. 

The percentage of people who test positive after visiting a GGD testing site also fell between March 21 and April 18, from 62.4 percent positive tests to 55 percent. The RIVM explained that the composition of people who go to the GGD for a test has changed, causing the percentage to fall. The test locations are now only intended for vulnerable people, healthcare workers, people who need a recovery certificate, and people who cannot take a self-test themselves. Last week, 51.2 percent of the tests were positive. 

The RIVM received 28 reports about people who died of Covid-19 in the past week. A week earlier, there were 66. A total of 315 people were admitted to a hospital with Covid-19 this past week, including 30 admissions to the intensive care. The week before, there were 435 Covid-19-related hospital admissions, including 50 to ICU. 

The RIVM’s hospitalization data comes from Stichting NICE, which monitors the status of intensive care units. Their data is usually considered preliminary and can be revised upwards as the week progresses.

The basic reproduction (R) value, which indicates how fast the coronavirus spreads, was slightly higher at 0.72. that means that a group of 100 people with the coronavirus infects an average of 72 others. The R-value was calculated on April 18. Last week, the RIVM reported that the R-value was 0.64, calculated on April 11.