Ten more people have died from the coronavirus and 15 more have been admitted to hospital, the RIVM Dutch health institute announced in its Sunday update.

This takes the total number of deaths of people who tested positive for Covid-19 to 5680 – although the RIVM has admitted that the ‘real‘ figure could be up to 40% higher since testing has been limited in the Netherlands.

However, in a sign that the impact of the virus could be stabilising, this was the lowest daily death toll in two months. Meanwhile, 125 more people tested positive for the virus, bringing this total to 43,995.

Hans Brug, director general of the RIVM, told television programme Buitenhof that people need to get used to coronavirus prevention measures as the new normal. ‘They will last a long time, possibly a very long time,’ he said. ‘It needs to become more like normal behaviour….The virus is here, and we have to learn to live with it.’

Meanwhile, Dutch family doctors’ association NHG said that even people with supposedly ‘mild’ complaints can actually be sick for anything up to two months, which is ‘a real problem.’