Do you remember what life felt like before corona? Without mouth caps, QR codes and keep your distance? For those who don’t know anymore: ask a Dane. “The moment the music explodes, thousands of arms go up in the air and everyone sings the same song, I feel what I’ve been missing for a year and a half: the indescribable, wonderful and free feeling of listening to live music together without anything happening. is what stops you,” writes Danish journalist Narin Frausing Korkmaz. She was at the Back To Live festival at a shipyard near Copenhagen last weekend. Along with 15,000 others. “It felt familiar and a bit forbidden at the same time.”
frontrunners
There they go again, the Danes. They were one of the first European countries to announce a heavy lockdown in March 2020, making them the first country to be able to leave slowly (in May 2020). The Danes are now frontrunners in the field of vaccination and today, as one of the very first countries, they are also throwing the very last corona measures overboard.
“The epidemic is under control,” said health minister Magnus Heunicke at the end of August. “Corona is no longer a critical threat to society.” And by relegating corona to ‘normal’ disease, the legal basis for many restrictive measures also disappears, the government said. Now the Danes have already abolished many restrictions in recent weeks (no more face masks on public transport, but festivals, nightclubs open again), but today the last measures are also going overboard: keeping a distance is no longer necessary, nightclubs and football stadiums are no longer necessary. to request vaccination certificates or test results and there is no longer a maximum number of visitors for events.
In other words, as of today, Denmark is back to the country it was before March 2020. What do the Danes owe that to? “Due to our high vaccination coverage”, says Nils Strandberg Pedersen, former director of the Statens Serum Institut, say the Danish Sciensano. “We quickly started pricking. And the Danes have a lot of faith in the government, so a lot of people got a vaccine. As a result, we now have the epidemic under control.”
The figures: 83 percent of all Danes over the age of 12 have been double vaccinated, there are still 450 new infections every day and 123 Danes with corona are in hospital, 26 of whom are in intensive care. In comparison: Denmark has 5.9 million inhabitants, slightly more than half the population of Belgium.
Corona pass a success
A second pillar under the Danish success, according to Strandberg Pedersen, is the corona pass. “We’ve been using it here for months.” Danes could use it to demonstrate that they had been vaccinated or tested negative. “That pass was very useful in keeping the epidemic under control at a time when not so many people were vaccinated.” The pass was not only necessary to enter events, but also for the catering industry.
“There were very few people who bothered about that. The system was seen as prevention, so that people could sit safely inside,” said René Passet, a Dutch music journalist who lives in Copenhagen. “Those who did not want to be tested, agreed outside.” He is surprised about the current Dutch discussion, which has erupted because the corona pass may become mandatory for the catering industry from the end of this month. “But mainly intended to persuade people to get vaccinated. The Netherlands has made a mess of it.”
“In fact, it has been almost no longer about corona for two months,” says Passet, “it is a huge difference from last year. Then you had a huge corona test location in Copenhagen in the Forum building. It was open 24 hours a day and there were sixty counters. It is now closed.”
Of course, experts are concerned about the future. Virologists calculated that 700,000 Danes could contract corona next winter. That can lead to seven hundred deaths. But the Danes have decided to accept a higher number of infections, says the current boss of the Statens Serum Institut.
Entry restrictions
His predecessor Strandberg Pedersen: “Abolishing the measures is a good decision. The delta variant is so contagious that you can’t stop it. Young people who are not vaccinated will contract corona but will not get very sick from it. So we can keep that under control.”
Passet is also curious about the coming weeks. “Young people in particular will go to nightclubs, among them the number of people who only have one shot is relatively high. I am curious how that will play out.” At the same time, the Dutchman cannot wait until he is back in a club himself. “I’ve been to some festivals. Just drink a beer, don’t have to worry about anything. As usual.”
There is one thing that the Danes are not yet abolishing: the entry restrictions. Belgium is still considered a ‘yellow’ country in Europe. So Belgians who want to enjoy the Danish freedom can only enter if they are fully vaccinated or if they can show a negative test result.
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