Stricter measures will be necessary if Covid infection numbers rise further: Koopmans

If coronavirus figures do not turn around soon, tougher restrictions will be necessary OMT-member Marion Koopmans said in an interview with Hart van Nederland. On Saturday the RIVM reported more than 10 thousand new infections, the highest number since Christmas.

Due to the worrying developments, the Tweede Kamer will return from recess on Wednesday to debate further measures. On Friday, the government announced that nightclubs would have to close their doors again and limited opening hours for the catering industry due to exponentially rising coronavirus infection numbers.

Koopmans said that the entire blame cannot be put on the Testing for Access system that allowed people access to events if they had a negative coronavirus test no older than 40 hours, but a lot did go wrong there. “During contact tracing from the GGD, it was discovered that things went wrong on a large-scale when checking tests”, Koopmans said. “That is very unfortunate because we thereby lost any leeway we had in one swoop.”

“We want to keep a very close on the developments next week. If this continues, we will have a situation that requires stricter measures in one to two weeks”, Koopmans warned. She acknowledged that no one is excited about that.

Less than half of the Dutch population has been fully vaccinated, meaning the virus can still circulate well. “And we know that vaccines protect a little less well against the delta variant than against the alpha”, Koopmans pointed out. “We see in England, which is ahead of the Netherlands that hospital admissions are also increasing. Because not enough people are fully vaccinated yet that could also happen here. And we must prevent that.”