All but three Dutch provinces down to orange on EU Covid map

Nine of the twelve provinces are taking one step down on the map of coronavirus cases in Europe. From Thursday they are no longer red, but orange. Only Friesland, Zuid-Holland and Flevoland remain red on the map by European health service ECDC.

Not only the number of positive tests in the Netherlands is falling, but also the percentage Of all tests conducted in the past two weeks, 3.8 percent revealed a coronavirus infection. On last week's map, it was over 4 percent, and in July, at the peak of the fourth wave, one in ten tests was positive.

The number of positive tests is falling fastest in Drenthe, Overijssel and Noord-Holland. About 20 percent fewer cases were identified there than with last week's map. Noord-Brabant and Zeeland have relatively the fewest positive tests. For every 100,000 residents, about 120 people were told that they were infected.

The situation is also improving in other parts of Europe. Several regions in France, Italy, Greece and Denmark have a lower warning color.

In Central Europe, on the other hand, the number of positive tests is increasing. The whole of Slovenia is now dark red, the highest level. The situation is also deteriorating in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Austria. Poland provided too little data for the ECDC to be able to assess the situation there. The country is therefore completely gray and that is exceptional.

The health service ECDC, the European counterpart of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, publishes the map every Thursday. The service looks at the number of confirmed infections and the percentage of positive tests in the two previous calendar weeks. The map has four colors. From low to high, these are green, orange, red and dark red. When the Netherlands turned dark red in July, this prompted countries like Germany and France to introduce stricter rules for Dutch people who wanted to cross the border.