“Corona Skeptics Debate Amidst Concerns over Lung Covid – Latest Updates from Minister Ernst Kuipers and WHO”

According to Minister Ernst Kuipers (Health Care, D66), “it can now be compared to other respiratory infections”. According to the WHO, there is no longer an “international public health emergency”. Nevertheless, the House of Representatives debated corona for hours on Wednesday. A day earlier, the MPs were updated as usual in a technical briefing by, among others good old Jaap van Dissel – the RIVM director who will retire at the end of this year.

The cabinet already decided in March that Covid-19 had reached the “endemic phase”. The virus remains present, but the population has built up immunity through vaccination or past infection. That is why the last corona measures also expired and the virus disappeared into the background.

The debate on “coronavirus developments” – to which the theme of “pandemic preparedness” had been added for the first time – therefore felt a bit like mustard after the meal. But for corona skeptical parties it turned out to be a great opportunity to get all the known criticism out of the closet once again. Member of Parliament Pepijn van Houwelingen (FvD) spoke of corona as “the greatest deception in Dutch history”, of “vaccine damage”, “absurd corona measures” and a virus that has been “modified in a lab”. Wybren van Haga talked about doctors who were silenced when they were right afterwards and called the former Minister for Care Hugo de Jonge (CDA) someone who “proclaimed blatant inaccuracies”.

It led to much annoyance among the other parties. “We are very much looking back on the past three years. I have trouble with that,” said Judith Tielen (VVD) cautiously. She referred to the upcoming parliamentary inquiry to evaluate corona policy – the research proposal will be presented soon.

The VVD itself, like most parties, preferred to talk about the problems that corona still causes. With dot on one: lung covid. There is growing concern in the House about this. Members of parliament wonder whether sufficient research is being done, and find the one-off compensation (of 15,000 euros) for healthcare workers who contracted lung covid during the first corona wave too meager and the group too limited.

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There is a lot of uncertainty about the number of lung covid patients. During the technical briefing, estimates varied widely. Jaap van Dissel spoke of 400,000, Jolande Sap of the Social Impact Team of about 93,000 people, Alfred Olde Loohuis of C-support, which supports patients, thinks of more than 40,000 patients.