Fewer than 425 Covid-19 patients in hospitals; Infection average drops to 46-week low

Hospitals in the Netherlands were treating 424 patients with Covid-19 on Tuesday, according to the LCPS. The patient total has fallen by 19 percent in a week, and by nearly half since the start of the month.

The number of intensive care patients rose slightly in a week, from 32 to 35. On Friday, there were just 25 people with the disease in the ICU, the lowest total since August 2, 2020. Another 389 people were being treated in regular care wards for Covid-19 on Tuesday afternoon. The last time the figure was below four hundred was in mid-October.

The RIVM said that preliminary data showed that hospitals admitted 197 new Covid-19 patients during the past seven days. That was ten percent lower than the previous week's preliminary figure, and roughly 18 percent below the finalized total of 241 admissions. That includes 18 intensive care admissions, roughly the same as the previous week.

Sewage surveillance showed a 15.7 percent decrease in coronavirus viral load found in sewer water during the second week of May when compared to the start of the month. The downward trend was likely to continue. Germ surveillance also showed a slight uptick in Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 variants, but the BA.2 variant remained the most common by far. Projections showed that a combination of the BA.4 and BA.5 variants would likely become most common in May or June.

Only 7,456 people tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus during the seven-day period ending on Tuesday morning. That was the lowest weekly total since the beginning of July. The total fell by 11 percent in a week. Similarly, the number of people tested for the infection by the GGD also fell by 11 percent to 11,729, the lowest weekly total since wide-scale testing began.

The basic reproduction (R) value also dropped slightly to 0.88, meaning 100 people contagious with the virus on May 9 infected 88 others. They then passed the coronavirus on to 77 people, who gave it to another 68 individuals. The further the R-value is below 1.00m, the faster the number of new infections is expected to decrease.

Last week, people were most likely infected by someone else in their own household (39.1 percent), according to a study of 1,063 people who tested positive. Another 15.4 percent tested positive after a trip abroad, 11.5 percent after entering their workplace, and 11.0 percent after visiting another household. Still 10.3 percent became infected at a party, while 9.6 percent were likely infected at a cafe or restaurant.

Source and contact tracing found that 532 people tested positive after a recent trip abroad, with 116 of them having visited Spain, and 53 traveling to Germany. The other popular destinations were the United States (44), Portugal (41), and the United Kingdom (40).

People in their fifties were most likely to test positive, according to data from the last calendar week. They accounted for about 19.1 percent of positive tests, with people in their thirties representing 18.9 percent of new infections. Only about 4.5 percent of positive tests were found among children aged 14 and under, with people 80 and over making up 3.9 percent of infections.

Over the past two weeks, per capita infections were highest in the Amsterdam-Amstelland region, with 75.5 per 100,000 residents. That was followed by the neighboring Kennemerland region (67.4), Rotterdam-Rijnmond (61.3), and Utrecht (56.6).