Sufficient support in the House of Representatives was already uncertain, but a new study is potentially the political death knell for the introduction of a 2G policy. A research team led by TU Delft published a report on this 2G system on Tuesday, in which only vaccinated or cured people are given access to certain locations, so a negative test would no longer be sufficient. According to the researchers, such a system would currently have a “very limited effect” on the reproduction number and the number of infections. The fact that the highly contagious Omikron variant is now dominant makes 2G a lot less effective, the researchers write.
The outcome of the investigation is another setback for the cabinet and the Ministry of Health. Former corona minister Hugo de Jonge (CDA) submitted his 2G law to the House of Representatives at the end of last year, but had to postpone the treatment due to a lack of political support. The cabinet wanted to buy time with that delay and hoped that support for 2G would grow during the lockdown, but with this new research into its effectiveness, the opposite seems to be happening.
The new Minister of Health Ernst Kuipers (D66) expressed his support for 2G at the corona press conference on Friday. “At least in the long run, 2G is definitely going to help open, open faster, and keep open longer,” he said. A spokesperson for Kuipers now says that the ministry will study the report and await further questions from the House of Representatives. “We’ll have to see what it means.” In the letter to Parliament accompanying the report, Kuipers only writes that a choice for 2G “must be viewed at all times in relation to the epidemiological situation and the applicable package of measures.”
Impact Omikron
The report looks at different variants of the corona pass: the current 3G system (access for vaccinated and cured people, testing obligation for non-vaccinated), a 2G model and also a 1G regime in which all vaccinated and cured people are still have to pass a test for access. The researchers looked at the situation in November last year, when the Delta variant was dominant in the Netherlands, but also looked separately at the impact of Omikron on the various access models at the request of the ministry.
In all cases, a 1G system comes out best: testing everyone – vaccinated or not – has “a much greater impact” on the number of infections and hospitalizations than 2G or 3G. Calculations by TU Delft show that 1G reduces the reproduction number by up to 19 percent if it is entered at all locations except school, work and home. With 2G and 3G, the R drops a lot less, namely 10 and 5 percent. It is not surprising that mass testing is epidemiologically more effective, but the government has always said that this is difficult to implement, because all kinds of outdoor activities would require hundreds of thousands of access tests per day.
The researchers come to the conclusion that the Omikron variant ensures that both a 2G and 3G system become less effective. “In these systems, where vaccinated and cured people do not have to test, you are much more dependent on the epidemiological situation,” says research leader Niek Mouter of TU Delft. “We see that Omikron circumvents the protection that the vaccines offer more than the Delta variant, more and more vaccinated people are still getting infected. That makes both 2G and 3G less effective.”
Omikron makes 2G less effective for another reason: the chance that you will end up in hospital after an infection with this variant is smaller, which also reduces the expected effect on reducing the number of hospital admissions.
The researchers state that every system of the corona pass benefits from being introduced in as many places as possible. The more settings that are controlled outdoors with, for example, 1G or 2G, the greater the chance that the virus spread will be inhibited. That conclusion contradicts the strict limitation of the possible deployment that has been included by the government in the 2G Act. Due to proportionality, the government only wants to be able to apply 2G in ‘high-risk’ settings such as catering, culture and events. With that choice, the effectiveness of 2G decreases even further.
Press on non-vaccinated
The introduction of 2G also seems to do little to further increase vaccination coverage. Although the cabinet has always said that 2G is not intended to put pressure on unvaccinated people, former minister De Jonge made no secret of the fact that he hoped it would be a “side effect” of 2G that unvaccinated people still get the shot. In the TU Delft research, only 3 percent of the unvaccinated say that they will be vaccinated after all due to the introduction of 2G. A larger proportion say that by using 2G they will continue to persevere in not achieving a vaccine.
In the corona debate next Thursday, Minister Kuipers will have to clarify whether he wants to continue with the 2G law in order to be able to use the instrument soon to further relax. With the current relaxation in, for example, the gyms, the 3G corona pass will be ‘normal’ again for the time being. If the Omikron wave is not too bad in the near future, Kuipers could avoid or park the politically sensitive discussion about 2G by relying on the existing 3G system, even if it carries slightly more risks from an epidemiological point of view.
Political wishful thinking
The cabinet is not assured of a majority for 2G because the coalition party ChristenUnie is against it in principle. D66, the most fervent proponent to date, hopes that the 2G law will be dealt with after all and that the instrument will be “in the cabinet’s toolbox”, says Member of Parliament Wieke Paulusma. “It is not a goal in itself for us, but it can help us keep society open as safely as possible.” Paulusma continues to wonder “how practically feasible” is testing everyone with 1G.
Among other parties in the House of Representatives, support for 2G appears to have declined even further as a result of the report. GroenLinks was one of the groups that could help the cabinet gain a majority, but MP Lisa Westerveld sees the confirmation in the research that a good substantiation is lacking. “We have always been very critical and that is no less now. So far, the choice for 2G seems to have been motivated by wishful thinking.” The PvdA, another party that can supply the majority and wanted to look at 2G with an “open mind”, is now “more critical”, says Attje Kuiken. “We question the effectiveness more, the research does not make the picture more favourable.”
Just like coalition party ChristenUnie, GroenLinks wants the new cabinet to focus on mass testing and 1G instead of a 2G system. ChristenUnie MP Mirjam Bikker called the investigation “a tipping point” in a statement on Tuesday. “Testing is much more effective than excluding people,” says Bikker. Thursday’s corona debate will show whether the new minister Kuipers is more sensitive to that argument than his predecessor De Jonge.
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