UPDATEThe Netherlands is again waiting for a hard lockdown in December. The OMT advises to lock almost everything quickly, the cabinet will decide this afternoon. A press conference is likely to follow.
Niels Klaassen
Latest update:
11:59
The cabinet first consults with the mayors of the Security Council, after which the ministers make a final decision on the corona measures. Everything indicates that the OMT advice will be followed. This would mean that catering, culture, sports, education and non-essential shops will also have to close during the day in the coming weeks. Supermarkets, drugstores and pharmacies will remain open.
Once again, just like last year during the holidays, the Netherlands is in a hard lockdown.
According to Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus, the cabinet is busy arriving at ‘good decision-making’ after a ‘serious’ OMT advice. The minister hints that he is concerned about the rapidly emerging omikron variant. “I take it very seriously,” says Grapperhaus before the start of the crisis meeting. At the same time, he says that the cabinet wants to come to a decision ‘that makes it possible for everyone to move forward in these dark days’.
Flatten golf
There is a worldwide alarm about the rapidly emerging omikron variant. In the Netherlands there were already more restrictions when the new mutant emerged, so the omikron wave seems to land here later. But the spread is spreading very quickly: in Amsterdam the share of omi crashes has increased tenfold in just over a week. Last Monday, 2.5 percent of the infections were an omikron variant, now that is more than a quarter.
With the hard lockdown, the OMT aims to flatten the fast new wave, so that not too many people become seriously ill and end up in hospital. At the same time, the booster injection round is accelerated, so that the antibodies against the new mutant are restored. British research shows that protection is still strong after a third (booster) injection. According to preliminary data, the third vaccination protects for 80 percent against serious illness and hospitalization, compared to 95 percent for delta.
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To care
Yesterday morning, the Outbreak Management Team discussed the latest data on the omikron variant that plagues countries such as England and Denmark. “We are concerned, the spread is going very quickly,” said Minister De Jonge after the Council of Ministers yesterday. “We will examine whether additional measures are needed to lower and delay the wave.”
For now, the mutant doesn’t seem any more sickening. But if the omikron variant infects many more people in a short period of time than the old virus version, hospitals will fill up faster than before. And the Dutch hospitals cannot have that, with currently more than 2470 corona patients admitted (of whom 638 are on IC).
On the brakes early
OMT chairman Jaap van Dissel may now be more inclined to step on the brakes early than before. In conversation with news hour the RIVM boss acknowledged on Thursday evening that the situation has been estimated ‘too often optimistically’. ,,You hope that the dime falls in the right direction, but we have seen too often that it is disappointing.”
In an interview with this news site in October, he was also too positive, the OMT chairman admitted. Van Dissel then predicted that hard lockdown rules would no longer be necessary next winter. That looks different now. ,,Of course we thought at the time: by that time we will have had delta for so long, we will finally clean it up. Omikron is something that ruins that party.”
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