Hospitals will also fill up in the partial lockdown …
RIVM chief scientist Jaap van Dissel said at a presentation to MPs that it will take ‘until December and maybe until January’ before we get back to a safe risk level. The effect of the partial lockdown, which will take effect tonight at 10 p.m., will be clear in November.
Hospital occupancy in the Netherlands today rose to 1,475 patients who tested positive, 301 of whom are in an intensive care unit. According to Van Dissel, hospital occupancy will continue to increase until the end of October or the beginning of November, and then gradually decrease. It is not until sometime between the end of November or mid-December that occupancy is expected to drop below a thousand beds.
This is in line with the prognoses that Ernst Kuipers of the National Network Acute Care presented this morning. Regular care foresees a bleak scenario: in the best case, four out of ten treatments will soon have to be postponed, in the worst case perhaps three quarters.
The bottleneck in healthcare remains the staff, Kuipers explains. Converting sports halls into emergency hospitals will therefore not help. “To the left or the right, such a large facility still requires the same skilled personnel.”
… And the cabinet is aiming for stricter quarantine enforcement.
One in ten people with a positive corona test does not go into compulsory quarantine. And 15 percent of the close contacts of infected people, who also have to be quarantined by the GGD, sometimes go outside. This has emerged from research by Bureau Berenschot.
That is why Minister Hugo de Jonge of Public Health is investigating whether quarantine offenders might be fined. ‘If people do not follow those advice,’ he explains, ‘there is a risk of further spreading of the virus.’
Legally, a quarantine is best enforced through the security regions. Minister De Jonge has drawn up a manual on when a director can consider this means and what the options are. A fine should only be used in extreme cases.
Minister De Jonge promised the House of Representatives this morning that the testing capacity will soon be in order. With mega laboratories, the use of rapid tests and a steady upscaling of the GGDs, the long waiting times, which have been around since August, must come to an end.
The duty to mask masks will probably only take effect on 1 November. Until then, an ‘urgent advice’ applies.
Further in the news …
– The RIVM again today reports more than seven thousand new corona infections. The weekly total thus rises to more than 46 thousand infections, 58 percent more than last week. This growth rate has been fairly constant in recent days.
– Rotterdam connects fight against slum landlords and mediators who charge ‘absurdly high prices’ for poorly maintained homes. Many tenants are intimidated, discriminated against and exploited, according to the mayor and aldermen.
– According to its own calculations, the Netherlands annually contributes 5.5 billion euros to the European Union. After deduction of a discount, this is 0.67 percent of the gross domestic product, the highest percentage of all member states. According to the definition of the European Commission, the Netherlands was the largest payer in relative terms only in 2014.
– More and more Dutch graduates. Women are also catching up a lot: in 2019, four out of ten people with a doctor’s degree are women. This is evident from figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics.
– China and Russia have both regained seats on the United Nations Human Rights Council. Human rights organizations had called on member states to vote against the two world powers because of their treatment of their own citizens. Saudi Arabia was left out.
– In the run-up to the elections, President Trump has launched a final offensive. While the pandemic goes wrong again in the United States, Trump is organizing multiple mass rallies a week, in crucial states.
– The Republican Party has set up its own collection points for postal votes in the US state of California. According to the predominantly Democratic authorities in California, these unofficial “ballot boxes” violate electoral law, but the Republicans refuse to remove them.
For more background …
Last week, the Ministry of Agriculture announced the 63rd and 64th infestations on a mink farm. The corona virus has already wiped out more than half of the mink sector in the Netherlands. The fires don’t seem to be extinguished. How is that possible?
Are the mink breeders – as conspiracy thinkers think – behind the corona outbreaks themselves? It could be financially attractive, as the government guarantees a clearance fee.
Perhaps it is the Eastern European workers, who have not adhered to the corona rules so closely? Or was the virus simply already in the stables long before we realized it? ‘The whodunnit has not yet been resolved,’ says veterinary epidemiologist Francisca Velkers. “The investigation continues.”
And then this …
For the Dutch national team, the Nations League continues tonight with an away game in and against Italy. Coach Frank de Boer is at the helm for the third time. A week after his debut as national coach, he is already fighting grumpiness and criticism.
This is partly understandable. The football of the Orange Lions went against Mexico and Bosnia to endless knitted, without risk, without many chances and especially without goals. De Boer’s vision – controlled attack from possession – is not what fans like to see. Its gruff appearance doesn’t help either.
Tonight’s game is therefore crucial in his still early national coaching position. Start: 8.45 pm. Place of action: the football stadium in the Italian city of Bergamo, with a thousand care workers in the stands.
The news in five minutes includes the news from Wednesday, October 14 to 5 p.m.
With ‘The News in Five Minutes’ investigates de Volkskrant the need for readers to be updated on the news in one article. If you have any comments or suggestions about this approach, please let us know. You can email us at [email protected].