If the cabinet actually extends the evening lockdown, that would be “sensible”, according to Ernst Kuipers. According to the chairman of the National Network Acute Care, sticking to the current corona measures gives time to reduce the pressure on hospital care, but also to obtain more information about the new Omikron variant.
There are currently no patients with the new variant, which was discovered in South Africa, in Dutch hospitals, says Kuipers. He spoke on Monday afternoon in Erasmus MC about the status of the pandemic. Omikron may lead to “serious numbers of patients” in the first quarter of 2022, according to Kuipers, but he emphasized that there is still little information about the variant. According to him, “the great unknowns” are still the contagiousness, the severity of the disease after infection and the extent to which vaccinations offer protection.
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