Read the most important corona news of Friday 4 February here.
8:00 am – GGD still hasn’t arranged privacy properly
The GGD still does not have its affairs in the field of privacy well organized. For example, former GGD employees can sometimes still access the personal data of all Dutch people more than a month after their dismissal from home. And in the Arnhem/Ede region, confidential information was shown to new employees as a class, reports the Gelderlander on the basis of information that the newspaper has obtained.
The GGDs have been under the magnifying glass of the privacy watchdog since January last year, when it turned out that the millions of address details, telephone and citizen service numbers from the GGD’s corona systems were traded on a large scale. Employees could easily access the data and also easily export it from the computer system. The Dutch Data Protection Authority then demanded additional measures to ensure that personal data is better protected.
7:30 am – Football clubs are campaigning to fill their stadiums
Professional football clubs will take action with the aim of filling their stadiums as quickly as possible. All players in the Eredivisie and Kitchen Champion Division will take to the field during this weekend’s games in shirts with letters that form the text ‘stadiums full’. The trainers and referees wear a button with that text on it.
Since last week, football clubs have been allowed to allow public access to the stadiums again. However, the cabinet will not allow more than a third of a stadium’s capacity to be occupied. Spectators must keep a distance of 1.5 meters from each other, sit on a chair and wear a mask when they walk through the stadium. Before visitors are allowed in, they are checked for the corona admission ticket. The professional clubs pleaded with the cabinet to be allowed to use at least two thirds of their stadium capacity, but the government did not want to go further than one third.
7:00 a.m. – Airports received two-thirds fewer travelers than before corona
Dutch aviation has clearly not yet recovered from the corona pandemic last year. In total, 29 million passengers flew through the five largest airports in the Netherlands. That is more than two-thirds less than in 2019, the last year before the corona virus spread worldwide.
Compared to the first corona year, it did become busier at the airports, reports the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Air passenger numbers increased by almost a quarter compared to 2020, when international flights were virtually impossible for a long time. Passenger aircraft were also better filled than a year earlier.
6:30 am – Health Council publishes advice on booster shot for young people
More than half of adults have now received a booster shot, but can it be the turn of young people now? Can 12 to 17-year-olds soon also receive a vaccination to strengthen their defenses against the corona virus? The Health Council will issue an advisory report on this on Friday.
The previous Minister of Health, Hugo de Jonge, had asked for the advice at the end of December. In the current wave, many young people have tested positive.
6:00 a.m. – Umbrella organization GGDs condemns video FVD
The umbrella organization of the GGDs is not pleased with a video that Forum for Democracy has made. For the video, a young person was sent with a hidden camera to vaccination locations where he said, among other things, that he wanted a corona shot without his parents’ permission.
According to FVD, GGD employees did not act in accordance with the law because the young person was not properly informed, among other things. The images show how he talks to a number of people at vaccination locations to get vaccinated. According to FVD, he would be “lied” by, among others, GGD doctors, and the medical advantages and disadvantages of the corona vaccine are never discussed during those conversations.