On Tuesday, the cabinet will begin a new and complex stage in the corona strategy: the country must be given the prospect of some relaxation before the holidays, without guarantee that such relaxation will also prove possible.
The press conference of Prime Minister Rutte and Minister De Jonge of Public Health will therefore be surrounded with great caution on Tuesday evening. In any case, the phasing-out of measures will be slower this time than in May and June. It should not be the start of a third wave of infections. What is certain is that the “aggravated lockdown” that is now in force for 12 days will be scaled down from Wednesday to the “partial lockdown” that has been in force since 13 October. The swimming pools, libraries, amusement parks, zoos and cultural institutions can, to a limited extent, receive visitors.
Already at the announcement of the reinforcement it was clear that this phase would end automatically after two weeks. The result is that the scaling down will now occur without it being clear whether the increase has had any effect. That is not yet reflected in the contamination figures.
It is clear that the partial lockdown of 13 October, with the catering and the restriction of group size as eye-catchers in particular, had a significant effect on the contamination figures after more than a month, but that the effect also seems to have passed its peak. The number of new corona infections is declining much less successfully than a week ago. On a weekly basis, the number of positive test results is still declining, but the pace of the decline is much slower than a week ago. On Monday, the RIVM reported with 4,873 new infections even a higher number than last Monday.
According to the cabinet’s “roadmap”, this must be reduced to 1,200 a day before there can be any relaxation again. The number of new admissions to the intensive care unit must therefore be less than ten people per day, where thirty new patients still require ventilation or other intensive care every day. “The figures are much lower than they were, but still much higher than they should be,” said De Jonge Monday.
Challenge
That places him and Rutte on Tuesday for a challenge. There has been a call to offer perspective inside and outside the cabinet for some time now, especially now that the holidays are approaching. Sinterklaas will have to be celebrated in a very small circle, Rutte said earlier, but what to do at Christmas and the New Year?
There is not yet an unambiguous message, Rutte announced on Friday. It is too early to say what will be possible, so speculation will remain. In Rutte’s own, hesitant words: ‘We hope to be able to outline the process of how we want to arrive at decision-making in the coming period (…) You want to see: what is possible, if the figures make this possible, around mid-December and somewhat more structurally towards January, and then specifically for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Then what could be safe in a sensible way? ”
The catering industry, which yearns for the return of customers, must in any case take into account that relaxation of the measures will be more cautious this time than in the spring, when the terraces filled up again after Whitsun weekend, but also the number of infections in the summer started to rise again. “That is, I think, the lesson we have learned,” said the prime minister.
