Covid-19 signs of improvement as new deaths, hospital cases fall further

New hospitalizations for Covid-19, the respiratory illness caused by coronavirus, continued to fall this week, with 57 new hospital admissions on Monday and 78 on Sunday. There was also a fall in the number of people with the disease who died, including 28 on Monday and 67 on Sunday.

The number of daily admissions to a hospital began to flatten out and drop after a peak of 559 new Covid-19 patients was reached on March 24, with the exception of brief spikes on March 27 and March 31. Similar could be said of the number of coronavirus cases resulting in death, which started to flatten out on March 31 before peaking at 159 on April 2.

Of the 135 thousand people who have been tested for coronavirus in the Netherlands, 27,419 have tested positive, health agency RIVM said on Tuesday. That includes over 200 more people who required hospitalization, bringing the total to 8,939 with data updated through March 21.

Some 2,945 people with coronavirus have died in the Netherlands since the end of February, including the weekend preliminary figures. On Tuesday, the RIVM added a total of 122 more people to the death toll, updating data through March 28.

The figures released daily by the RIVM only involve statistics on patients who were actually tested for Covid-19. On Tuesday, GPs in the Netherlands started a project in which they will register patients who become very ill or die of what their physicians strongly believe to be Covid-19, but the patients were not actually tested for the presence coronavirus. They hope that this will help give a more complete picture of the spread of the virus in the Netherlands.

Over 2,800 people have donated money to Leiden University for coronavirus research over the pat 3.5 weeks. By 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the online crowdfunding action raised 570 thousand euros. "We are very happy with that," Eric Snijder, professor of molecular virology at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) said to NOS.

LUMC has one of few laboratories in which it is safe to research the coronavirus in the Netherlands. The donated money will be used to expand the research capacity to a second lab to study the virus and test potential vaccines, Snijder said. "I get the impression that people are happy to be able to contribute something," he said.