Coronavirus kills another 175 pushing Dutch death toll over 1,000 mark

Some 1,039 people in the Netherlands who previously tested positive for coronavirus have died since the end of February, Dutch public health agency RIVM said on Tuesday. The figures include an additional 175 people whose deaths were recorded in the previous 24-hour period.

To date, 4,712 people have been hospitalized, an increase of 722. The rise in patients whose hospitalizations and deaths were recorded by the RIVM did not necessarily indicate that those events took place on Monday or Tuesday, but that they were spread out over several days in the past week. This was attributed to delays in communication between the hospitals, the municipal health officials at the local GGD office, all the way up the chain to the RIVM.

Among the 722 are 146 patients with the coronavirus disease, better known as Covid-19, who have been admitted to intensive care units on Monday and Tuesday through 2 p.m. It brings the total number of people currently in an ICU for Covid-19 to 1,068, with another 55 suspected but as-yet unconfirmed cases being treated as well. The Netherlands is in the process of scaling up its intensive care unit bed count to 1,600, which leaves just 477 beds for patients without Covid-19, when the country normally needs about 575.

One possible bright spot in Tuesday's data is the falling number of patients from Noord-Brabant requiring treatment in a hospital. "The province of Noord-Brabant seems to be over the peak in the number of new hospital admissions," the RIVM stated. Noord-Brabant was initially the epicenter of new known infections in the Netherlands, but stay at home measures were introduced in the province several days before the rest of the country.

At one point, the province was home to 45 percent of the known infections in the country, a figure which steadily declined for over two weeks. "The number of hospital admissions is still increasing in Zuid-Holland, Noord-Holland, Gelderland and Limburg," the RIVM stated. "The number of hospital admissions is stable in the provinces of Friesland, Groningen, Drenthe, Flevoland and Zeeland."

The RIVM added another 845 to the total number of people who tested positive for the virus, which means 12,595 in total were confirmed as having been infected with the virus.

Children's Ombudsman Margrite Kalverboer wants kids who can't do their school work at home to be able to go to school. She is thinking of children who are forced to be in an unsafe home situation all day, such as victims of domestic violence ro neglect, but also children from poor families who do not have the equipment for distance learning at home, or children who have a sick parent.

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