Netherlands shatters single-day coronavirus record with 35,000 infections reported
The Dutch public health institute was informed of nearly 35,000 new coronavirus infections in the Netherlands between Thursday and Friday morning. That was more than 10,000 higher than the previous record set just one day earlier. The RIVM said Friday's high figure also includes all of the data which was missing from its report on Thursday due to an IT error.
Despite the aberration caused by the missing data, the Netherlands was on pace to beat the previous record for most infections reported in a single week. The official statistic is calculated every seven-day period ending on Tuesday morning. The all-time record is 155,152, set during the last week of November 2021. Since the last report, a total of 84,244 coronavirus infections were registered by the RIVM, with four more days left to go in the week. The 2020 weekly record was 82,340, set in December of that year, but testing was not widely available in the Netherlands until June 2020.
A total of 34,954 positive test results were recorded by the RIVM in its daily update on Friday. That pushed the seven-day moving average up 14 percent in a day to 21,526, based on raw data alone. The figure reached its highest point in over a month after ten consecutive increases. A combination of raw and corrected data pegged the figure at 21,487, a 62 percent increase in one week.
Amsterdam destroyed its old record with a figure of 3,661, nearly two-thirds higher than the previous record set in the capital on Wednesday. That pushed the city's seven-day average up to 1,902, a 114 percent increase in a week. Rotterdam also set a new record of 2,420, nearly double its previous record. That city's seven-day average moved to 1,136, which doubled in a week. Utrecht also reported 965 infections, pushing that city's average to 533, and another 848 tested positive in Groningen, where the seven-day average was 345.
The basic reproduction value jumped up significantly to 1.16, a figure which estimates the coronavirus situation on December 23. That means that 100 people contagious with the infection on that date was likely to pass it on to 116 others, who then infected another 135 people. The figure was at a more manageable 1.02 just three days earlier.
Between December 30 and January 5, about 34.8 percent of those tested by the GGD received a positive diagnosis, also a record. An average of 63,281 tests were completed each day during that period, a third more than the previous week. Over 90,000 tests were conducted on January 5 alone.
