"We're not there yet," Justice Min. says about falling Covid figures

Even with the number of new coronavirus infections falling, Netherlands residents still need to comply with the measures in place to curb the virus' spread, Justice Minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus said on Monday after meeting with the Security Council, the council of mayors that head the country's 25 security regions. "We still have around 5 thousand infections a day and we are not there yet," he said, NU.nl and AD report.

A relaxation of the measures is therefore not yet on the cards, Grapperhaus said. What the measures will look like over Christmas, is still unclear. "In any case, it will not be Christmas or New Year's as we knew them last year," said Hubert Bruls, mayor of Nijmegen and head of the Security Council. 

"I think we really need to realize that as a society we still need to take steps to make sure we get much further into the safe zone. We need to be very, very wary of this virus. Let's not count our chickens before they've hatched," Grapperhaus said.

On Monday, public health institute RIVM reported 4,709 new coronavirus infections, nearly a thousand less than the day before and down 46 percent compared to last week Monday. The number of hospitalized Covid-19 patients increased by 22, but this slight increase is nothing to worry about after the previous days' decreases, Ernst Kuipers of the national network for acute care LNAZ said.

The Justice Minister called on people to specifically adhere to the call to work from home as much as possible, because Netherlands residents aren't sticking to that as well as they could. "We are discussing this with employer organizations," he said. "The less movement and travel, the more difficulty the virus has to spread. The sooner we get out of this misery."

Grapperhaus also expressed his admiration for everyone who has been working from home since the start of the crisis. "I myself have the privilege of coordinating things at the office and it is impressive to see how people keep it up," he said. "Last week I had a conversation with a dozen officials about what it is like to sit alone at home or in a relatively small house with two small children who constantly climb over you. That is quite drastic."