Coronavirus cases fell by 30% in the last week, while the number of patients admitted to intensive care was less than half the previous week’s level.

The latest weekly update from the public health agency RIVM shows positive tests and hospital admissions at their lowest level since last September. The positive test rate dropped from 9.0% to 7.2%.

Infections were down for all age groups, with the steepest declines of 39% to 44% in the age bands between 55 and 85.

The downward trend was slower in children under 15, where cases were down by 14.2%. The RIVM said the difference was probably partly due to schools reopening and more children being tested.

Altogether 14,397 positive tests were recorded in the seven days to June 6, compared to 20,608 the previous week. The number of people admitted to hospital declined by 32.1% from 560 to 380, while 50 patients were taken to intensive care compared to 116 the week before – a difference of 56.9%.

Around the 25 local safety board regions the number of infections per 100,000 people ranged from 51.8 in Friesland to 129.8 in Gelderland-Zuid. Five regions are above the level of 100 which is classed as level 3 (‘severe’) on the government’s four-point risk scale.

In the 24 hours to Tuesday another 1,465 cases were recorded, while the number of Covid-19 patients in hospital declined from 993 to 937. There are currently 321 patients in intensive care, 22 fewer than on Monday.

Another 63 deaths were recorded in the first week of June, three fewer than in the previous week, taking the total registered by the RIVM to 17,695.

The actual number of Covid-19 deaths is considerably higher: the statistics agency CBS recently concluded on the basis of death certificates that at 27,000 people died in the first 12 months of the pandemic to February last year.

Around 1.6% of people who tested positive in the last week had travelled abroad in the previous two weeks, almost half of whom had been to Belgium (25.8%) or Germany (23.3%). Nearly 60% of people said they had caught the virus from someone in their household.