The number of positive corona tests continues to fall. This is evident from the weekly figures from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). Between March 29 and April 5, 135,073 positive tests were registered, a decrease of about 42 percent from the week before. The number of tests taken also fell sharply: from 331,247 between March 22 and 29, to 220,512 in the past week. The number of positive tests has been falling for several weeks in a row and is now at its lowest level this year.
The declining number of tests may be due to the government’s announcement that the Dutch will no longer have to go to the GGD after a positive self-test from 11 April. The number of GGD test streets will also be reduced. The call remains for the time being to go into isolation if there is an infection.
Between 22 and 29 March, RIVM registered more than 220,000 positive corona tests. In the week before, between 15 and 22 March, there were about 313,000. By mid-March, the number of positive tests per week was still more than 400,000 – after an increase after Carnival. The most recently calculated reproduction number is 0.79, even lower than that of mid-March. That means one hundred infected infect an average of 79 others. The reproduction number is below 1, which means that the spread of the virus is on the decline.
In the past week, 81 corona patients were admitted to Dutch intensive care units, 63 of them because of their Covid-19. In the week before, there were still almost a hundred patients. Nearly three hundred fewer corona patients were also admitted to the nursing wards. Slightly more people died from the effects of Covid-19 in the past week: 113, compared to 104 in the week before.
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