No Covid-19 patients in ICU for the first time since pandemic began

There are no longer any patients with Covid-19 in intensive care units at Dutch hospitals. This marks the first time without any Covid-19 patients in the ICU since February 2020, when the coronavirus was first identified in the Netherlands.

At the peak of the pandemic, during the first wave in April 2020, intensive care units housed more than 1400 Covid-19 patients. Regular healthcare in the Netherlands was brought to a complete standstill as a result.

The only two patients in intensive care with the disease on Thursday afternoon were no longer listed at an ICU a day later. It is not clear whether that is because their condition has improved, or because they have died.

Patient figures are only evaluated once per day, so the lack of ICU patients is only a snapshot, emphasized the National Coordination Center for Patient Distribution (LCPS). It may be that someone was transferred soon after from another ward to an intensive care unit.

The figure also offers no guarantees for the future, as patient levels can change. The influx of new patients in regular care wards increased slightly in recent weeks, probably due to the emergence of a new sub-variant of the coronavirus.

At the beginning of this month, about 70 patients with the coronavirus disease were in a regular care ward. Since then, that figure has swelled to more than 70.

The spread of the coronavirus is now monitored by measuring the number of virus particles found in sewage. There has also been an increase in these figures in recent weeks. This may indicate that more people are infected with the virus. It is difficult to be certain if this is the case, because the large-scale coronavirus testing program has been ended.