EvaluationEven in the final phase of the corona approach, the cabinet struggled with medical tunnel vision, the IC capacity was still too dominant and the risks of other, long-term health damage caused by corona were taken for granted and underexposed. The short-term strategy was leading for far too long.
The Dutch Safety Board (OVV) outlined this on Wednesday in its third and final report on the Dutch corona approach.
The OVV has previously strongly criticized the approach to the pandemic, because the Netherlands was not well prepared for such a major health crisis. (first report) and because the effects of disruptive lockdown measures were never mapped (second report). And things also went wrong in the final phase of the corona crisis, according to the OVV: the cabinet continued to focus on the number of IC beds, the Ministry of Health retained control over the corona approach, while the crisis is now much ‘broader’ used to be. And ethical considerations were not always properly explained to parliament and the public.
After the first waves subsided, corona fatigue also increased in the Netherlands. With the arrival of vaccines and under great social pressure, restrictions were again relaxed considerably from the autumn of 2021 and after the Omikron lockdown at the end of 2021 (‘the Netherlands was one of the few countries in Europe’ to be locked down again) this happened again. As expected, this led to enormous numbers of infections, but not to a large influx to intensive care units and hospitals. That was good news, was the message from OMT and the cabinet.
OVV: VWS held all the reins for too long
In order to better combat the next pandemic, the OVV recommends switching more quickly to a broader crisis approach and communicating much more clearly about ethical considerations – who should be spared and who should be allowed to run more risks due to the measures.
From now on, the government must also consult broader expertise, take better account of long-term risks, pay better attention to the overload in healthcare and clearly communicate the uncertainty of models. ‘These models mainly focused decision-making on the short-term perspective.’
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But the individual health damage caused by a corona infection – such as post-covid – remained underexposed in communication and in the considerations, the OVV writes. ‘Health damage that did not lead to pressure on intensive care was not included in the crisis approach.’ The council nowhere writes that relaxations should have been postponed, but the considerations and communication regarding risks such as post-covid should have been better: ‘Allowing higher infection numbers meant a greater risk of post-covid (…) which is considered to be a health damage as inevitable. But it is not clearly explained that those risks increased. Especially now that health risks became more individual and people were given the responsibility to make their own decisions, it is striking that the government mainly emphasized which danger had decreased: namely that the ICUs would become overloaded.
In this way, long-term medical and mental damage caused by corona infection was not sufficiently identified in the final phase of the approach. Exact numbers are lacking, but according to an estimate by the OMT, 100,000 to 375,000 Dutch people suffer from long-term complaints due to a corona infection. They suffer from fatigue, shortness of breath, an irritability disorder, memory problems, ‘brain fog’ or a combination of these.
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