Normally, the GGD, as an implementer, endorses the government’s quarantine policy. Until now. Together with 25 other GGD directors, public health director Jac Rooijmans of the GGD Limburg-Noord published a critical opinion piece. According to them, the policy seriously harms schoolchildren in particular.
How did you come up with this criticism?
‘The 26 GGD directors of public health meet each other every week in a digital meeting. As guardians of that public health, we saw how, less than two weeks after the schools opened, one class after another was sent home. That takes extreme forms. A quarter of primary school students are now in quarantine. In one region, the number of classes sent home rose from 25 to 410 in three days. That is as fast as the rule that an entire class has to go home if three or more children are infected.’
What is your concern?
‘The whole prospect for a normal life for young people has disappeared. Here the remedy has become worse than the disease, it is no longer in balance. Young people suffer from this, cognitively, socially and emotionally, they become lonely. Omikron is very contagious, but they hardly get sick from it. The elderly and vulnerable who want this have now been boosted. We must give a signal from our role. The work of the GGDs goes further than vaccination and testing.’
How should it be then?
‘If a child is infected, it stays at home. The classmates can just go to school. We have to rely on the common sense of parents and school boards. And the schools can ask the GGD for advice. Our teams are ready to support them.’
But the whole society is beeping and cracking under the increasing infections and the quarantine rules? This can make infections even faster.
“There are also other groups that suffer from quarantine rules, and we also understand that those rules are necessary to slow down the spread of the virus, as far as possible. But that’s what the Outbreak Management Team has to consider. We are now talking about education. That the general rule of sending a class home in the event of three or more infections must be abandoned is in the interest of the young people.’
Your Utrecht colleague director Nicolette Rigter joked on Wednesday: ‘Soon half of society will be in quarantine and the other half will be in line with us for a test.’
‘Some quarantine rules have already been relaxed, for example that you do not have to quarantine if you have been boosted and have no complaints. I now assume that the OMT will also take into account the consequences for society in its advice on these rules. The number of tests per day now rises to 150 thousand per day. I’m also curious how far we want to go with that. Or that the rules are also changed when you have to go to the test street. That too is up to the OMT. But now we first want to draw attention to the children.’