Dutch gov't too slow to act in second wave of Covid-19 infections: Safety Board

The Cabinet was too slow to act ahead of the second wave of coronavirus infections in the fall of 2020. The number of infections was rising rapidly, but the government hesitated with measures because it feared social unrest, the Dutch Safety Board said in its second coronavirus report on Wednesday, NU.nl and ANP report.

The Safety Board looked at the period from September 2020 to July 2021, and at the three main measures the government took to curb the spread of the coronavirus - mandatory face masks in public spaces, school closures, and curfew.

This was the period after the “realtively quiet summer,” the Safety Board said. And that is also the crux of the problem. Infections started rising rapidly in August 2020. But the government only started intervening a month later. The Safety Board mentioned the advice to wear a face mask in public spaces, which came at the end of September after a lot of social and political pressure.

According to the Safety Board, the government’s hesitance stemmed from a fear of social unrest as support for the coronavirus measures dwindled. “Whereas there was great support for measures in the first half of the coronavirus crisis among large parts of the population, this was no longer obvious in the second phase of the crisis.”

That left the Cabinet with a dilemma - intervene quickly with a lot of social resistance or wait and then take harsher measures. The Cabinet opted for relying on people and companies’ personal responsibility in these months, the Safety Board said. It released its coronavirus “dashboard” with “signal values” to warn people to be extra careful as infections increased in an attempt to prevent another lockdown.

According to the Safety Board, the Cabinet sometimes damaged social support for coronavirus measures itself by being firm about their effect with little scientific substantiation. It mentioned vaccination as an example. The government said vaccines brought “light at the end of the tunnel” and that “shot by shot, normal life is getting closer.” But when it turned out that a high vaccination rate did not immediately result in fewer restrictions, “a part of the population felt disillusioned,” the Safety Board said.

Vaccination

The Safety Board also said that the Netherlands’ coronavirus vaccination campaign started later than other countries because the Cabinet initially focused entirely on the AstraZeneca vaccine, with the plan to have GPs distribute it. The Pfizer vaccine turned out to be ready faster, but had to be stored at temperatures of -70 degrees, which most general practitioners couldn’t do. As a result, the GGDs had to scramble to set up large-scale vaccination sites within a month.

The Netherlands only started vaccinating people against the coronavirus on 6 January 2021 - weeks later than many other European countries. Though the Safety Board did note that the Netherlands eventually caught up.

Curfew and restrictions' efficacy

The Dutch Safety Board also criticized how the Cabinet handled the curfew, which was announced on 20 January 2021. The Outbreak Management Team said in advance that the curfew’s effects were uncertain, but the Cabinet hardly mentioned that when introducing the curfew. The government initially implemented the curfew for three weeks. But it ended up last three months after five extensions.

According to the Safety Board, the effects of various coronavirus measures are still unclear because the measures have hardly been researched and evaluated. “Because there is little monitoring and evaluation, this uncertainty persists.” The Safety Board urged the Cabinet to conduct an investigation so that it can make “better considerations” in the event of a new revival of the virus.

First report

Earlier this year, the Dutch Safety Board released a critical report on the first part of the coronavirus pandemic. It concluded that the Cabinet neglected nursing homes in the first wave of coronavirus infections. It also said that RIVM director Jaap van Dissel’s presence on “almost all crisis teams" created a kind of tunnel vision, resulting in the Netherlands focusing only on combating the virus and not the social effects of doing so.