Estimated number of patients who contact the general practitioner for the first time with COVID-19-like symptoms

A representative sample of around 350 GP practices across the Netherlands provide data once a week to the Nivel (Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research) Primary Care Database. They record reported and observed symptoms and diagnoses of the consulting patients they see. Using this data, Nivel determines how many patients saw their GP in the past week for the first time for symptoms that could indicate COVID-19. Nivel determines this on the basis of the diagnostic codes reported by GPs (‘acute upper respiratory system infection’, ‘other respiratory infection(s)’, ‘influenza’, ‘pneumonia’, ‘other viral disease(s)’, ‘other infectious disease’, ‘fever’, ‘shortness of breath’, ‘coughing’) in combination with textual information provided that could indicate COVID-19. To improve this indicator’s accuracy, Nivel also recalculates the data for the preceding weeks, so they include information that only became available at a later time. The Nivel Primary Care Database provides this information once a week (Thursdays) and delivers this information in JSON format to the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. The source file gives the numbers per week (Monday through Sunday).