The number of infections is stable and few people with corona are in hospital, but the pandemic is not over yet. In fact, a new corona wave in the autumn is likely. The government is not well prepared for this, experts say during a round table discussion with members of parliament on Monday.
“If there’s a new wave, we don’t know when that will be, it could raise complicated questions. Will there be another lockdown?” Tanja van der Lippe, professor of sociology at Utrecht University, wonders.
Van der Lippe, among others, wrote it published in September last year report ‘Navigating and anticipating in uncertain times’, a publication of the Council for Government Policy (WRR) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).
“Now is the time for that. It is relatively quiet. Is COVID-19 care given priority or can that no longer be asked of those who are already on the waiting lists?” said Van der Lippe.
According to the scientist, it is important to talk about this now, so that radical measures are more easily accepted if they have to be taken.
The WRR/KNAW report sets out five scenarios that the government should take into account. That ranges from ‘back to the old normal’ to a worst-case scenario in which the pandemic claims more victims every year and continues to circulate worldwide, the scientific institutes wrote last fall.
‘Our care is not flexible enough to absorb the next wave’
“We are now sailing on the most likely scenario called the ‘flu-plus’ scenario,” says Xander Koolman, health economist at VU Amsterdam. In that scenario, the WRR and the KNAW assume that corona is no longer a pandemic with recurring, seasonal revival.
Koolman: “But even in that scenario, I think there is a chance that we will move towards a lockdown, because our care has not been flexibilized in a way that is necessary to process future waves in a normal way.”
It is impossible to train many more nurses in a short period of time, says Koolman, but they can be deployed differently if the situation calls for it. That is only difficult for the Netherlands specifically, according to the professor.
Koolman describes the Dutch healthcare system as a field with many different healthcare providers. Some are for profit, others are not, but they all have a great deal of freedom of action.
That freedom is only given up when there is panic, Koolman believes. “The government seems to be waiting to act until there is panic again. That is very unfortunate, because we could have changed that.”
‘There is no data to make a prediction’
André Knottnerus, professor of epidemiology and medical statistics at Maastricht University and also author of the WRR/KNAW report, emphasizes that especially now ‘in peacetime’ it is important to be as well prepared as possible. “We have often experienced that we thought we were alert, but when the virus was over, it collapsed again. Then you are vulnerable as a society.”
In itself society is “shockproof and resilient”, says Van der Lippe, but there are also groups that were less so, as has been shown in recent years. These were not only vulnerable from a medical point of view, but also the group that had little socio-economic help at their disposal. “The government has a responsibility to protect them. They are less self-reliant,” said Van der Lippe.
That is why, in her view, it is important for the government to thoroughly review the five scenarios. “So we know what to do just in case.”
We don’t know which way the virus will go. “There is no data to make a prediction,” says Knottnerus.
RIVM is jealous of Denmark and the UK
Nevertheless, RIVM would like more insight to gain and maintain an overview of the virus, says Susan van den Hof, head of the Center for Epidemiology and Surveillance of Infectious Diseases of the RIVM during the same roundtable discussion.
She looks somewhat jealously at her colleagues in Denmark and the United Kingdom, where, according to her, data sharing is well organized. “That gave them a very good view of what was going on.”