The Netherlands is heading for a hard lockdown: probably today | politics
UPDATINGThe Outbreak Management Team has opted for a hard lockdown and everything that the cabinet will follow this advice. That includes everything shutting down in our country. The cabinet will discuss this in the conclave and will give the final outcome a result. That opportunity is ‘very present’, according to an insider.
Niels Klaassen
Latest update:
09:57
In the morning, the cabinet holds consultations with the mayors in the Security Council. Later, the most concerned ministers will meet to discuss the new advice of the OMT. A Prime Minister Rutte and care minister De Jonge may then follow a speech by Rutte from the Torentje at 7 p.m., as was the case with the previous winter lockdowns.
The advice of the OMT is intended to keep the omikron variant small. The team is advocating closing all sectors, with the exception of essential basics such as supermarkets, pharmacies and drugstores, according to sources. This step should stifle the rapid advance of the much more omikron variant.
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 look at additional measures needed to lower and delay the wave.”
For now, the mutant doesn’t seem any more sickening. But if the omikron variant becomes more infected over time than the old virus version, practices will realistically 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).
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math
The RIVM modellers worked until the night to make accurate forecasts. OMT chairman Jaap van Dissel might now lean more towards starting on the brakes than before. In conversation with news hour acknowledged the RIVM boss evening that the situation has been estimated ‘too often fun’. ,,You hope that the dime falls in the right direction, but we have often seen that it is disappointing.”
in a interview with this news site in October he was too too positive, the OMT chairman admitted. Van Dissel then predicted that hard lockdown rules would no longer be necessary for 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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