The catering industry will be closed from 20.00 pm, up to four people are welcome at home and it is mandatory to keep one and a half meters away – such measures were no longer necessary, were they? The cabinet and the OMT hoped to be able to control the corona virus in September with a high vaccination rate and corona tickets, which should reduce the risk of infections. But that turns out not to be enough.
However, the corona pass will not be said goodbye. After the package of measures that was announced on Friday evening and will last three weeks for the time being, it should even become one of the most important measures to “delay” the virus, said outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) on Friday evening.
The cabinet wants to make the corona ticket mandatory in most retail trade – essential shops are excluded – and amusement parks and zoos. In addition, entrepreneurs should be able to choose to implement a 2G policy. A negative test ticket is then no longer a valid admission ticket. This requires a legislative change. The question is whether the House of Representatives will agree to this.
‘Unprecedented Heights’
“The infections are very fast and very high in the last few weeks,” says epidemiologist Carl Moons of UMC Utrecht. “Even to unprecedented heights, despite the deployment of the corona ticket system.” It is not easy to say whether this was due to the corona pass, enforcement or the consequences of the relaxation. “We are dealing with a rapidly spreading virus, not everyone is vaccinated and the coronapass system is not watertight. A lot of things were allowed again without mouth caps and without one and a half meters. Unfortunately, in places where a corona ticket is mandatory, vaccinated people can still pass on the virus unknowingly. The only thing is that they don’t get very sick as quickly anymore. But they can certainly still be infected and infect others.”
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With the current number of infections – more than 16,000 positive tests were reported to RIVM on Thursday and Friday, never before have there been so many – there is no stopping the corona pass either. This measure does reduce the number of infections, but does not prevent all infections. And if the number of contagious people is so high, the chance of infections at a location with a corona pass also increases.
Two sides
The knife of a 2G policy cuts both ways: according to Moons, a negative test result is “a very temporary effect”, because the result depends on when someone is tested. A person who tests negative might “as well test positive the next day.” At the same time, a person who tested negative and therefore has no protection against the virus is much more likely to contract the coronavirus.
In order to give the stricter version of the admission ticket a chance, the number of infections must be reduced. By eliminating sports competitions and events where many people gather for the next three weeks, infections – in both vaccinated and unvaccinated – are prevented. If the number of infections is lower, the stricter corona pass has a better chance.
The question is whether the number of infections can be reduced far enough in three weeks. The corona pass also could not prevent the current wave, while the numbers were much lower then. For example, around 35 Covid patients were admitted to the hospital’s nursing ward every day at the beginning of September. There are now about 185.
Reproduction number
That number will probably increase further in the coming weeks, because measures will only have an effect on the number of hospital admissions after about two weeks. With the growth rate of the past week, we are at the peak of this wave at over 250 hospital admissions per day. Moons: “Until at least Friday, that distribution will still take place as it has taken place in recent weeks. They all have yet to get sick – if they get sick, that is. You will see an effect after two weeks, but a trend rather than a real decline.”
It will probably take longer before the number of admissions is back to the level of September, when the corona pass was used in the catering industry. The reproduction number R plays an important role in this – the number of people who infect one infected person. Above 1 the epidemic grows, below it decreases. Last winter, strict measures barely succeeded in getting the R around 0.8. Suppose that these measures are successful, then the number of infections, and in theory the number of hospital patients, will halve every two weeks. After six weeks, three halvings later, the number of new admissions would be about thirty per day.
Will it remain strict measures for a relatively short period this time? It would not be the first time that a package of measures takes longer than announced in advance. The curfew that was in place at the beginning of this year would be in effect for two weeks. It ended up being three months.
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