Happy Friday everyone! ☀️ We made it to the weekend.
I would also like to give a shout to my mother who has an irregular job which is not only Monday-Friday – hope you’re getting some time off here and there!
It has now become routine to check the numbers from RIVM (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) in the afternoon, as they release statistics about the coronavirus deaths and hospitalizations around 14:00 every day. They seem to have increased their server load in the last week or so as the site doesn’t freeze around that time anymore.
Note: The Netherlands has increased testing capacity in the last week, so the number of confirmed cases is going up due to that. They are now able to test healthcare workers outside of hospitals, including workers who work in home healthcare.
The statistics regarding ICU beds can be found at NICE (National Intensive Care Evaluation) although that page is not available in English. Daily numbers are released sometime after 16:00 each day. Also note the time stamp at the top of the page is whatever the time was when you visited the site, not the last time that it was updated. But keeping an eye on the ICU beds is important is this country as we needed to quickly increase our numbers to be able to handle the expected strain in the ICU.
In either case, the numbers aren’t complete yet as some hospitals send in their reports a day or two later. For example our country generally has a higher number of deaths on Tuesdays as they include deaths over the weekend and on Monday.
Here’s a photo from The Hague Centraal train station earlier this morning:
ProRail is responsible for the infrastructure and capacity of the rail transport lines, while NS (which I mention sometimes in this blog) is responsible for most, but not all, of the passenger transport in The Netherlands.
And a look at the current tram schedule at the train station:
At the moment, trams operate every 20 minutes during the day on a weekday and every half hour in the weekend.
Stay safe!
Life in the Hague 