An invisible wave of coronavirus particles flew through the hallways of nursing homes in February and March 2020. Management, staff, residents and their family members were not prepared for it. In no time, a huge shortage of protective equipment arose in the Netherlands: face masks, splash goggles, aprons. Nursing home employees walked around unprotected: all the items that were there were awarded to the hospitals. A “silent disaster” in nursing homes was the result, as the Dutch Safety Board (OVV) concluded in February 2022 in a first analysis. Of the ten thousand deaths during the first corona wave, half died in a nursing home.
Nursing home residents “unintentionally became victims” of the fact that the Dutch crisis approach “focused mainly on preventing overload of hospital care”, the OVV concluded. What may have played a role in this: the nursing home sector was not at the table during the first phase of the corona pandemic, but prominent figures from the hospital world were.
How did the cabinet come to decisions during the two-year corona crisis? Why were nursing homes deprived of protective equipment in that first phase? Why did schools close three times to limit the spread of the virus? The lockdowns, the curfew, the corona admission ticket: who did the responsible ministers receive advice from, what was the role of the House of Representatives? These questions are central to the public hearings of the parliamentary Corona inquiry committee, which will start on Friday, May 29, after a difficult run-up. Under the leadership of VVD MP Daan de Kort, almost fifty people involved will be heard under oath about their experiences during the corona period, roughly from the beginning of 2020 to spring 2022.
The committee says it explicitly wants to look at the impact that the drastic and freedom-restricting measures had on society. As a result, some topics that were previously the subject of much discussion are not taken into account, such as the purchase of face masks from former opinion maker and CDA prominent Sywert van Lienden. “You have to make choices and you cannot investigate everything, and the matter is still before the courts,” says a spokesperson on behalf of the investigative committee.
Some topics are left out of consideration, such as Sywert van Lienden’s face masks
Key players such as former Prime Minister Mark Rutte, then Minister of Health Hugo de Jonge and former RIVM director Jaap van Dissel will speak, although it is not yet known exactly when. The House already decided in the autumn of 2021 that there would be a parliamentary inquiry.
This will not be the first investigation into how the Netherlands navigated the corona pandemic. The Dutch Safety Board (OVV) produced under the leadership of former minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem three reports. Also the Court of Audit and the National Ombudsman spoke out about (parts of) the corona policy. Like this concluded National Ombudsman Reinier van Zutphen in June 2022 that the responsible ministers stated “insufficient [werd] looked at the effect of many of the corona measures on the lives of children and adults.” The protection of public health was always paramount; according to the Ombudsman, the government paid too little attention to other fundamental rights such as education, equal treatment and freedom of demonstration.
Photos Olivier Middendorp, Merlin Daleman, ANP
Well prepared on paper
On paper, the Netherlands seemed perfectly prepared for a pandemic. In its first research report, the OVV listed for eight pages which agencies were concerned with infectious diseases: from the GGD and the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) to hospitals and safety regions. In practice, this entire structure full of abbreviations turned out to be no match for the coronavirus: there was too little capacity to test people, the hyper-efficient healthcare system created a shortage of ICU beds, and there was little insight into the virus spread. The vaccination campaign also got off to a slow and messy start.
The Dutch government was drowned in the many bodies that had to manage this crisis
Prime Minister Rutte emphasized at every press conference: as politicians and policymakers, we must listen to the experts. Their advice was sacred. But the question soon arose: which experts? In practice, the most important decisions were made informally; especially in the Sunday Catshuis meeting. There, according to the Dutch Safety Board, decision-making on the corona measures was “intensively prepared”, after which the pre-prepared decisions only had to be taken formally. Only then did parliament come into play.
In the Catshuis, the most involved ministers, led by Prime Minister Rutte, consulted with experts, with three doctors having a great influence on the decision-making. RIVM director Jaap van Dissel, also chairman of the convened epidemic advisory body Outbreak Management Team (OMT), was present as standard. Diederik Gommers, chairman of the Dutch Association of Intensive Care, and Ernst Kuipers, chairman of the Erasmus MC and chairman of the National Coordination Center for Patient Distribution, regularly attended.
The OVV was extremely critical of this informal way of working: among civil servants there was “uncertainty about responsibilities and the question of who coordinated and managed everything”, and this working method also “avoided built-in control mechanisms”. A form of role mixing occurred among leading physicians: they sometimes presented economic arguments to defend government interventions and in talk shows explained the policies that they themselves advised and helped implement.
The experts involved apparently had a lot of influence: for example, the late introduction of a face mask requirement in public indoor spaces in December 2020 seemed to be related to the private belief of OMT chairman Van Dissel, who believed that “a face mask had no added value” in the one-and-a-half-meter society. In many other European countries, face masks have been mandatory since the spring of 2020.
The question is how the committee of inquiry will look at such decisions after hearing all those involved. A survey in the United Kingdom delivered in 2024 very critical conclusions about ‘groupthink’ among responsible administrators, whereby a small group of people made drastic decisions without sufficiently considering possible alternatives.
Photos Olivier Middendorp, Merlin Daleman
Restriction of freedoms
Because hospitals quickly reached their limits, the government was forced to resort to very drastic measures and an unprecedented number of citizens’ freedoms were restricted. From a ban on visiting the elderly in the nursing home to a curfew that forbade residents from venturing outside without a good reason. From a ban on gatherings and a mandatory corona entrance ticket to the lockdowns where people could only meet family or friends to a very limited extent and schools, shops, hairdressers, cafes and restaurants had to remain closed.
We know that children actually play no role at all in this disease, a RIVM spokesperson said in early March 2020. “I don’t think it will happen that all schools in the Netherlands will close. I think that chance is virtually excluded.” That was also the government’s line. Until medical specialists and some school administrators screamed bloody murder two weeks later. They urgently appealed to the cabinet to close the schools immediately. Their appeal was successful, because the government immediately closed all schools and childcare. The question is how the government listened to which experts at that time. Shortly before, the Outbreak Management Team had advised to keep the schools open. How did those recommendations come about?
In the crucial first phase, the Outbreak Management Team was one anyway black box
In the crucial first phase of the outbreak, this influential advisory body was one anyway black box: who exactly was on the OMT was not disclosed, the minutes were secret, the scientific substantiation of the advice was not made public. All scientists involved had to sign for confidentiality. Parliament was also not shown the underlying documents of the advice in the first phase.
The OMT advised positively about the curfew that was imposed at the end of January 2021 for the first time since the Second World War, but pointed out major uncertainties about its usefulness. According to the OVV, these uncertainties were largely ignored when the government announced its plan. The curfew came after the House of Representatives had approved it. He lost half an hour: it would only apply from 9 p.m. instead of 8:30 p.m. The clock would be set for a period of three weeks; that became three months after five interim extensions.
The restriction of freedoms increasingly led to social resistance: in October 2020, almost three thousand doctors and other medical professionals called on the government to relax the policy, because the corona measures would cause more damage than the virus itself. At the beginning of 2021, a group of economists united under the banner of Herstel-NL to argue for a more open society and the abolition of measures. The committee of inquiry will wonder whether sufficient attention has been paid to experts other than virus fighters, such as economists, behavioral experts and education experts.
Photos Olivier Middendorp, Merlin Daleman
Corona pass
The fundamental rights of Dutch citizens were also at stake when the ‘corona admission ticket’ was introduced from September 2021. Initially, the cabinet applied a so-called 3G policy: anyone who had been vaccinated, tested or recently cured of corona was allowed to enter a café, stadium or cinema after showing the CoronaCheck app. Mona Keijzer, then CDA State Secretary for Economic Affairs, was fired by Prime Minister Rutte at the end of September after she resigned The Telegraph had criticized the introduction of the corona pass.
During a press conference In mid-November 2021, Rutte and De Jonge announced that the policy would be tightened to ‘2G’ due to rising infections: only those who had been vaccinated or had recently been cured were allowed to enter busy places. In practice, it meant that after a change in the law, unvaccinated people would no longer be able to enter a café or museum unless they had just had corona.
Critics feared social exclusion and a division in society. The Privacy First Foundation spoke of “a massive violation of everyone’s right to privacy” and warned: “This puts pressure on social life and can lead to large-scale inequality, stigmatization, social segregation and [..] tensions.” The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights considered the corona pass only for vaccinated people disproportionate intervention in people’s freedom.
De Jonge already had the Digital Support Guidance Committee advised not to use the corona pass for ‘vaccination urge’, because that could cause resistance in society. The plan indeed turned out to be fuel for major disturbances in Rotterdam in the evening of November 22, with citizens pelting the police with stones and fireworks and officers shooting at civilians. Dozens of arrests were made; the riots became world news.
The committee of inquiry will wonder how bill came about around 2G. It is certain that the idea came from the OMT: that be the government in September 2021 on the possibility of “using a reinforced corona admission ticket in certain situations or settings”, for example by keeping unvaccinated people outside. According to the OMT, this was already happening in Berlin discos.
According to the OMT, it was a “complex decision in which many other social considerations also play a role.” The cabinet nevertheless developed the plan into a bill. Only after pressure from the House of Representatives, where there was no majority for 2G, did Ernst Kuipers – the former hospital administrator who had since become a minister – decide to withdraw the proposal in February 2022. The pandemic was almost over at that point.
