Hospital admissions for coronavirus declined by more than 40% in the last week in what the public health agency RIVM said was further proof that the vaccines were bringing down serious infections.

The latest weekly bulletin shows 533 people were admitted to hospital in the last week of April, of whom 112 were taken into intensive care. The figures for the previous week were 940 and 196 respectively.

The effect was most pronounced in people aged between 40 and 79, who have accounted for the vast majority of hospital cases in recent months.

In the last five weeks the number of 40 to 59-year-olds needing hospital treatment has dropped from 592 to 214, while admissions for 60 to 79-year-olds have fallen from 932 to 189.

‘The effect of the vaccination campaign is clearly visible in the breakdown by age of people admitted to hospital with Covid-19, both on the wards and in intensive care,’ the RIVM noted in its summary.

The number of new reported cases fell by 18.4% in the last seven days to 20,608, while 9% of all tests for coronavirus were positive, compared to 10.4% the week before.

Another 66 deaths were reported, a 31.3% reduction from the previous week’s figure of 96.

There was an increase in infections among school-age children, with 12.5% more five to nine-year-olds and 5.5% more 10 to 15-year-olds testing positive compared to the previous week.

The virus is receding fastest among the over-65s, with infections down by at least 35% in every age group except the 85 to 89 bracket in the last week.

Around the 25 safety board region the number of infections per 100,000 people ranged from 72 in Noord-Holland-Noord to 165 in Brabant-Noord, with seven areas recording levels under 100 and four above 150.

The RIVM’s latest calculation of the reproductive number R, which specifies how many people on average an infected person passes the disease on to, was unchanged at 0.82 on May 17.

The latest daily figures show another 2,530 infections were recorded in the 24 hours to Tuesday morning, below the average for the last seven days of 2,944.

In total there are 1,240 Covid-19 patients in hospital, 87 fewer than on Monday, while the number in intensive care has gone down by 30 to 447 in the last 24 hours.