Favorable picture of the development of Coronavirus in the region

SCHIEDAM – The situation around Corona patients in our region seems to be developing quite favorably. In hospitals in the Rijnmond area, 41 patients with complaints after a Corona infection are in the ‘clinics’; a week ago there were fifty. The number of registered new infections is falling.

A spokeswoman for Franciscus Gasthuis & Vlietland puts it at about ten patients on the wards in the two hospitals. No Corona patients have been admitted to the ICUs for some time. That image has been on display for just under two weeks. At the beginning of the summer holidays, the picture was even different. “The recordings are now, this week, not too bad. But in the first three weeks of the summer holidays there was a sharp increase.”

In the entire region of the southwest of the Netherlands (Rijnmond, Zuid-Holland-Zuid and Zeeland), according to the latest figures, seven people with the virus are in an intensive care unit. In that area, 67 people have been admitted to the wards. On July 23 there were 151 and since then that number has been falling almost continuously.

The GGD Rotterdam-Rijnmond tested 898 people positive in its own test streets last week. A week earlier, 1148 infections were detected in the control area (from Goeree-Overflakkee to Krimpen aan den IJssel), the week before 1702. A temporary peak was reached at the beginning of July with more than three thousand new infections in the region, determined by the GGD. In the longer term, the peak was at the beginning of March, when more than twenty thousand people tested positive at the GGD.

The graph above shows the number of infections detected in the test streets per 100,000 inhabitants. It is clear to see that there were still an increasing number of infections in June and early July, but there has been a decrease since then. Of course, many people are on holiday – so they can’t get tested here – and the advice to take a PCR test after an infection detected with a self-test has no longer been in effect since April.

Nevertheless, the hospitals are not yet reassured. The spokeswoman for the Franciscus states that there is counting on an increase in the number of patients in the autumn. “We are trying to prepare for this.” That is difficult, because ‘the magnitude of the increase cannot be estimated’.

In the Franciscus, the rule remains that ’employees and medical specialists wear a mouth-nose mask when making contact with care within one and a half meters of the patient’. “In practice, this means that staff working in a nursing ward, emergency department, outpatient clinic or treatment and research department wear the mask from break to break. This is to prevent frequent putting on and taking off the mask.”

An important factor to be ready in the event of a possible resurgent pandemic is, of course, the presence of sufficient personnel. These days, many employees and independent doctors can enjoy a holiday, to return to work soon rested. But there are also the necessary sick, also because of Corona. In the Franciscus, absenteeism is currently between nine and ten percent.

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