One in six people who died in the Netherlands between March and the end of June this year had coronavirus, national statistics agency CBS said on Thursday.

But the impact of the virus was much stronger in the south of the country, where it first took hold, and in one part of Brabant one in three deaths were coronavirus related, the CBS said.

In general, the coronavirus related death rate was eight times higher in the south than in the north. In total, over 10,000 people are now thought to have died from coronavirus-related causes during the first wave, of whom almost 4,000 lived in the southern provinces.

In Brabant and Limbrug, 105 deaths per 100,000 of the population were due to coronavirus, compared with just 12 in Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe, the CBS said.