More than 9,000 coronavirus infections were reported on Monday morning, after a weekend when the reported figures were affected by technical problems.

The figure of 9,263 includes adjustments for the previous two days, when some data was processed late and appointments were delayed as the network of local health boards (GGD) worked to fix the issues in their computer systems.

In the last week infections have decreased by approximately 10%, but the positive test rate has risen to 11.5% nationally and is as high as 15.1% in the worst affected region, Zuid-Holland-Zuid.

On average just over 7,000 new cases have been reported per day in the last week. The number of reported deaths has declined to an average of 18 per day, including 17 in the last 24 hours.

Hospital admissions have not yet started to decline, with the number of patients being treated for coronavirus going up by 42 to 2,642 on Monday. Another 21 people are in intensive care, taking the number to 825.

‘Extremely serious’ in north

Hospitals in the north of the country warned on Monday that they were on the brink of having to postpone emergency surgery because of the shortage of intensive care beds.

Peter van der Voort, who co-ordinates intensive care across the northern provinces, told Omrop Fryslân that the situation was ‘extremely serious’.

Infections are relatively low in the north of the country, but around 30% of patients have been transferred from hospitals elsewhere, while the high level of staff sickness has also restricted capacity.

‘In Groningen we have had to cancel all operations in what we call class 3. That means that planned operations for people with cancer of the oesophagus, for example, have been postponed,’ Van der Voort said.

‘We can still just about offer acute care, but we are getting close to the limit.’