Under threat from rebellious entrepreneurs across the country, the cabinet will meet this morning in the Catshuis to discuss the lockdown. Rutte IV seems to be heading for a partial relaxation, but there is not much room, experts warn.
The Catshuis meeting starts at 9.30 am and will be finished around noon. Less than a week after taking office, the new cabinet is facing ‘perhaps the most difficult phase of the crisis’, says an insider from The Hague.
Because the infection peak of the omikron wave is still expected to come, while the call for a looser corona regime is loud. Numerous entrepreneurs are announcing that they will open anyway. And yesterday, in a rare salvo, there was one critical note after another cry for help – from shopkeepers to hairdressers, from psychiatrists to trade associations, and especially: from provincial governments to mayors.
The common thread is clear: give people more space. Offer perspective, let entrepreneurs get to work, work on a reopening. The cabinet can only respond to this and get the country off the lockdown lock, insiders realize. “Doing nothing at all about relaxation is not an option,” says a source from The Hague. Although there is little room for epidemiologically speaking. Another says: ,,If there is no relaxation, the whole mess will break out. But what’s to come will still be limited.”
It Outbreak Management Team (OMT) spoke last night about the latest RIVM forecasts and various relaxation scenarios. The experts considered what can be (partially) open: higher education, contact professions, sports clubs, culture and/or catering. But if anything can be done, it will “be done in small steps,” a source previously reported.
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OMT member Andreas Voss told Op1 yesterday that the OMT has considered the relaxation scenarios and consequences for hospitals and the number of infections. ‘Simplification must be done in steps’.
Although infection figures are through the roof, researchers see clear bright spots in the new variant, which appears to be less pathogenic. Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst says that omikron is ‘close to flu’, studies from abroad also show significantly fewer hospital admissions for the variant, compared to the delta version of the virus.
The fact that many surrounding countries will get through the omikron wave for the time being without such a hard lockdown, increases the easing pressure even more.
However, the cabinet is hesitant, partly because after easing the number of infections will increase rapidly and the country could become disrupted if hundreds of thousands of people are infected or quarantined at home. The OMT has also been asked whether the quarantine rules can be relaxed, so that they ‘fit well with the new variant’.
After the Catshuis consultation, the cabinet will make a final decision tomorrow, after which another corona press conference will follow. This time it will have a different design.
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