New Dutch corona minister also skeptical about a quick end of lockdown: “There is very little space” | Coronavirus what you need to know

Read everything about the coronavirus in this file.

There is a new Dutch government and therefore also a new Minister of Health: Ernst Kuipers (D66) takes over from Hugo de Jonge (CDA). He will move to the Interior, where he will be responsible for Housing and Spatial Planning.

The members of the OMT will meet again tomorrow/Wednesday about the latest forecasts of the Dutch health institute RIVM on the corona pandemic. There will be a political meeting on Thursday. The decision will follow on Friday and there will be another press conference for the population.

Kuipers and his colleagues are in front of the block: the call for relaxation is loud in the Netherlands, especially at sports clubs, shops and catering. But at the same time, the OMT outlines that caution is advised. Although the new omikron variant results in ‘half to two-thirds’ fewer hospital admissions, the number of occupied beds does increase in countries where the omikron peak was approaching earlier.

If the situation of those countries is translated to the Netherlands, then twice as many corona patients should be admitted there as in the spring of 2020, when the number of occupied beds reached a record. Dutch hospitals cannot handle such a peak. So if the cabinet already wants to relax, it can only be done on small parts.

In the decision-making process, the cabinet also includes a new mouth mask guideline from the OMT. According to the advisors, the (homemade) textile mouth mask has had its day in the Netherlands. With the rapidly spreading omikron variant, the virologists believe that everyone inside should wear a mouth-nose mask that states on the packaging that it is suitable for medical purposes. (In slang: at least type II).

These surgical mouth masks protect better against virus particles and therefore reduce the chance of infection or passing on corona. The experts believe that masks should also be worn in busy places outside – shopping streets, demonstrations, markets. The twist follows years of swabbing – cap on, cap off – around the Dutch mouth mask policy.

Let’s move on to the actual figures: never before have so many corona infections been detected in the Netherlands as in the past seven days. The number could even exceed 200,000 positive tests. The current record was set at the end of November, when there were 155,152 new cases in seven days. That record will be broken anyway, because more than 172,000 infections have already come to light in the past six days.

RIVM reports later in the day the number of hospital admissions and deaths in the past week. Those numbers are likely still going down. Last week, 981 people were hospitalized in seven days, 164 of them in intensive care. In the same seven days, RIVM had received a message that 189 people had died after being infected.

Later in the day, RIVM will also report the status of the booster campaign in the Netherlands. The most recent figures are from the end of last week. By then, nearly 5.5 million adults had received such a boost. That equates to 38 percent of all Dutch people aged 18 and older. Currently, about 1.5 million people receive a booster vaccine each week.

The new corona minister also wants to look at the fight against corona from a broader perspective, he said on Monday. In his view, the focus of the previous cabinet on healthcare in particular is untenable. “We really need to make long-term policy, for the simple reason that this will not go away,” said Kuipers after Hugo de Jonge handed over the baton to the Ministry of Health.

Now, “one specific model of the RIVM is being looked very closely at, about expected numbers of infections and cases of illness”, according to Kuipers. “The question will be, can you also put other models next to it, calculate a wider palette, and thus get a little more certainty.” He is not only thinking of models about healthcare utilization, but also about economic impact. “We have to take those kinds of aspects into account.”