Not a carefree summer, but the start of a summer wave. After months of relative calm and a declining trend, the corona figures are rising seriously again. The infection pressure in particular is increasing, RIVM reported on Tuesday, but the number of corona patients in hospitals is also starting to rise again. That this is already happening just before the summer is “alarming”, says Mark Kramer, chairman of the National Network Acute Care. “Society has decided that Covid-19 no longer exists while we see more sick patients coming in again. That is really a different reality.”
The number of reported infections increased for the third week in a row, according to RIVM, last week by about 70 percent to more than 26,000. This figure can no longer be compared with previous waves because at that time everyone with complaints was tested at the GGD, says epidemiologist Alma Tostmann of Radboudumc in Nijmegen. She therefore looks at several indicators. “The number of virus particles in sewage water is rising very quickly, and the figures are also rising in healthcare. We don’t see huge numbers there yet, but the direction of all indicators is up and that’s not nice.”
According to the RIVM, the rapid increase in the number of infections is mainly due to the fact that two sub-variants of Omikron, BA.4 and especially BA.5, have been dominant in the Netherlands since the beginning of this month. These are more contagious than the original Omikron variant, but as far as we know not more sickening.
It is very difficult to predict how the incipient summer wave will develop in the coming weeks, says virologist Marion Koopmans of Rotterdam’s Erasmus University. “The link between infections and hospitalizations is much less clear. A recent wave in South Africa with these variants was nothing, in Portugal it did put more pressure on healthcare.”
Press care
For the cabinet, the pressure on healthcare was and is the most important indicator. The milder Omikron variants hardly put more pressure on the ICUs: there are only about twenty corona patients spread across the Netherlands.
The pressure on the nursing wards is increasing again: last week the number of new Covid admissions almost doubled, from around forty to more than eighty on Tuesday. The number of Covid patients in the nursing wards rose from more than four hundred to almost six hundred in a week.
These patients are also a bit sicker than before, says Mark Kramer of the National Network Acute Care. Recently, about half of the corona patients had been hospitalized for a reason other than the infection. According to him, about two thirds of the patients are there because of the virus itself. It remains mainly medically vulnerable and elderly patients who end up in hospital, a large proportion of which are not or not fully vaccinated.
For the hospitals, these numbers are “manageable,” says Kramer. If the increase continues at this rate, the number of new admissions will double in the next two weeks. The hospitals will really feel that, he expects, for example in the pace at which all catch-up care can take place. That is about a hundred thousand operations. “It’s simple: any bed occupied by a Covid patient cannot be given to another patient.”
Staff at home
The hospitals are also affected in a different way: more staff are infected again and are forced to stay at home in isolation. “And that in a period when the staff is finally going on summer vacation again,” Kramer sighs.
RIVM and Minister Ernst Kuipers (Public Health, D66) see no reason for panic or for new measures. Kuipers repeated in the House of Representatives last week that a number of basic rules are still important, such as that people with complaints do a self-test and go into isolation if they test positive.
Fewer and fewer people are doing this, by the way: slightly more than half of the Dutch still do a self-test in case of complaints and slightly less than half adhere strictly to the isolation rules after an infection, according to behavioral research by the RIVM.
Epidemiologist Tostmann believes that the government “should communicate much more clearly” about this. She lacks a clear strategy at Kuipers.
Tostman: “He has clearly spoken out against new lockdowns, but then you have to do something else at an earlier stage. Put more emphasis on what is needed to keep the infections low, there is really even more effect to be gained from the basic rules. Otherwise, there will soon be two options: measures will be needed again, or many people will receive another phone call that their surgery has to be postponed.”