The emergency advice will be considered by the cabinet on Saturday. This is a day ahead of schedule. According to NOS sources in The Hague, it is likely that a new press conference will be held on the same day to announce the new Corona measures.
There is a good chance that the Cabinet will decide to close secondary education a week earlier as well as primary schools and close everything else except for essential shops and services, such as supermarkets and banks. The rest, such as restaurants, hairdressers, clothing stores, parks, furniture stores, zoos: everything must be closed after that.
The House will return from next week’s recess to discuss additional measures, possibly on Wednesday.
In the Netherlands, the omicron variant has been diagnosed in more than a hundred people, but the actual number of cases is likely to be higher. Virus copy spreads quickly. This can lead to a new wave of infection. The National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) expects Omicron to be the most popular variant soon after the end of the year. This will likely be the case sooner rather than later in Amsterdam.
Double every two days
According to the models, this could once again overburden hospitals and intensive care units. In the UK, the number of infections doubles every two to three days. RIVM President Jaap van Diesel calculated in the House of Representatives this week that the same growth could lead to 600 hospitalizations per day, of which 100 to 125 are in IC. By comparison, at the height of the current wave, in late November and early December, there were about 400 hospitalizations per day, of which about 50 were in intensive care units.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte previously said he was “not optimistic” about developments surrounding the new variant, which appears to be much more contagious than the delta variant that has prevailed so far. Outgoing Minister Hugo de Jonge (Public Health) said Friday after a cabinet meeting that the cabinet was “extremely concerned” about the new alternative to the virus. “We will take the necessary measures if necessary.”