Covid hospitalized total falls 3 percent; New infection total is unclear

Hospitals in the Netherlands were treating 1,531 people with Covid-19 on Wednesday afternoon. That was down 3 percent compared to Tuesday, after accounting for new admissions, discharges and deaths. The hospitalized total was roughly 12 percent higher than a week earlier, according to figures from the LCPS.

There were 206 patients in intensive care units, matching the lowest total in 100 days. The ICU tally fell by 20 in a day. The other 1,325 patients were in regular care wards, a net decrease of 29.

Dutch hospitals admitted 199 patients with the disease since Tuesday afternoon, including 18 who were sent directly to intensive care units. On average, hospitals admitted 189 patients each of the past seven days, up 5 percent in a week.

The RIVM said it released flawed data on Wednesday evening detailing new daily coronavirus infections in the Netherlands. The Dutch public health institute initially reported that 144,586 people tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, but that total "is not correct," the RIVM wrote. It said some of the test results reported on Wednesday were already included in Tuesday's data release.

The organization began taking data directly from the testing sites managed by the GGD this week, instead of through a centralized database operated by the GGD. The decision was made because of the difficulty the GGD had in collecting data as the number of people testing positive began to climb higher and higher in mid-January.

The RIVM said it would put a new dataset online as quickly as possible.