Covid-19: ICU patients likely down 90% from peak by Thursday

The Netherlands had over 1,400 patients with Covid-19 being treated in intensive care on April 9, but sometime next week that figure is expected be a small fraction of what it was. In the 43 days since, the number of intensive care cases has gone down 41 times down to 252, according to data from the Dutch patient coordination office LCPS.

"We expect the drop to continue towards 150 by the middle of next week," said acute care leader Ernst Kuipers on Friday. The decrease over the past month has largely been driven by a staggering increase in the amount of patients who have recovered, nearly four times greater than the number of deaths recorded after the peak number of patients was reached.

Data from intensive care nonprofit NICE showed that since April 23, the number of patients who were discharged from hospitals totaled 632, while 162 patients died. By comparison, in the first week of April, Covid-19 deaths outnumbered discharges 2-to-1.

In total, the Netherlands has sent 2,848 patients to intensive care for Covid-19, according to NICE. Of that total, 813 have died, while 1,268 have recovered. Another 475 were still being treated on Friday, but were no longer in an ICU.

The LCPS said that there were three fewer patients in ICU on Friday versus Thursday, and one patient was still being cared for in Germany. The relatively low decrease was likely due to the holiday staffing level in intensive care units on Thursday, which meant patients were more likely to be discharged later in the day, Kuipers said.