Curfew starts an hour later from tonight

From Wednesday evening, the coronavirus curfew in the Netherlands will start an hour later. With daylights savings and the weather becoming nicer and nicer, the government agreed to give Netherlands residents an extra hour outside.

From today, curfew will start at 10:00 p.m. and end at 4:30 a.m. Stores selling food and catering establishments' takeaways can remain open until 9:45 p.m. The rest of the curfew rules, and exceptions thereto, remain unchanged.

Curfew was first implemented in the Netherlands on January 23. The idea is that people visit each other less, and thus help curb the spread of the coronavirus. Those caught breaking curfew will be fined 95 euros. The police issued nearly 6,500 such fines last week.

The rest of the coronavirus measures will be in place until April 20. Another coronavirus press conference is scheduled for April 13. Then departing Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Health Minister Hugo de Jonge will update the population on the state of affairs around the coronavirus.

On Tuesday, public health institute RIVM reported that the coronavirus situation in the Netherlands continued to worsen over the past week. The number of new infections diagnosed jumped up by 13 percent, affecting all age groups and all regions in the country. Some 51,866 people tested positive for Covid-19 last week.