Hospital admissions

538 new COVID-19 hospital admissions were reported last week. That is 266 more admissions than in the previous week. The number of ICU admissions for COVID-19 also increased last week, with 115 new admissions. There were 33 in the week before.

Age distribution of hospital admissions
Since the end of June, an increase in hospital admissions and ICU admissions has been observed in all age groups (Figures 1 and 2). The largest increase in both hospital and ICU admissions was seen among people in the age groups of 40-59 and 60-79 years. These age groups not only showed the largest increase, but also the highest number of people admitted. Hospital admissions are expected to peak this week.

Figure 1: Hospital admissions by age group, by calendar week, from 31 May – 25 July 2021 (source: NICE Foundation) 

Figure 2: Intensive care (ICU) admissions by age group, by calendar week, from 31 May – 25 July 2021 (source: NICE Foundation)

Positive COVID-19 tests

The number of positive tests per 100,000 inhabitants decreased last week, dropping from 399 in the week before to 215 last week (-46%) (Figure 3). The reported number of positive tests decreased in all security regions. The number of newly reported infections decreased in the age groups between 13 and 59 years. There was a particularly sharp drop in the number of newly reported infections in the age group of 18-24 years (-64%). In the age groups of 0-12 and 60-69 years, the number of newly reported infections stabilised. The number of newly reported infections per 100,000 inhabitants remained lowest in the age groups of 70 years and over, although it did rise slightly.

More than 259,000 people were tested for COVID-19 in the test lanes of the Municipal Public Health Services (GGD) in the past calendar week. That is 38% fewer than in the week before. The percentage of positive tests in the GGD test lanes decreased from 15.4% to 13.6%*.

Figure 3: Number of reported COVID-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, by age group.

Reproduction number R

The reproduction number for 12 July based on positive COVID-19 tests decreased from 1.75 to 0.80 (lower limit 0.78 – upper limit 0.81). The reproduction number for 10 July based on hospital and ICU admissions is approximately 1.4. The R number based on admissions is not affected by testing behaviour. However, the R number based on admissions changes more slowly than the R number based on positive tests, since an individual who is hospitalised with COVID-19 is admitted about a week after testing positive, on average. 

Vaccination status

Between 1 July and 26 July, 165,750 people received a positive test result. The vaccination status of 81% of those people is known. Of the people who tested positive and whose vaccination status is known, 11% were fully vaccinated, 16% were partly vaccinated, and 73% were not vaccinated (or not yet) (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Newly reported positive tests in July, categorised by age. Whether the people were not vaccinated, partly vaccinated or fully vaccinated when they were tested is based on self-reporting.**

* This percentage of positive tests does NOT include the tests that were taken in the context of travel. In order to obtain a test result for travel purposes, more than 35,000 people were tested in the GGD lanes and more than 414,000 people were tested at commercial test sites. In total, 0,7% of these travellers tested positive. 

** The vaccination status is not known for all those tested. The term ‘partly vaccinated’ is used when someone has received a first vaccination of a vaccine for which two doses are needed less than 14 days ago, or if the final vaccination of the required number of doses was administered less than two weeks ago. A person is fully vaccinated two weeks after the last dose of the vaccination schedule. The people who tested positive for COVID-19 and were not yet fully or partly vaccinated consisted of the following groups: those who had not received any vaccine at all, those who had received 1 dose of the Janssen vaccine less than 14 days ago, and those who had received 1 dose of another vaccine less than 14 days ago.