LIVE | 175,000 extra Janssen vaccines available | Inland

The Australian metropolitan city of Sydney will be completely in lockdown for two weeks due to an outbreak with the highly contagious Delta variant of the corona virus, the authorities announced on Saturday. A day earlier, it was already decided to lock four parts of the city, including the center and Bondi Beach, from Friday midnight for a week. That measure affected a million inhabitants.

According to Prime Minister Gladys Berejiklian of the state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, the lockdown also applies to the regions surrounding Australia’s largest city. People are only allowed to leave their homes for essential work, education, shopping or outdoor sports.

29 local infections were reported on Saturday, the largest increase in infections since the first case was discovered in Bondi last Wednesday. A limousine driver became infected while carrying a crew of an overseas airline.

The total number of infections in Sydney now stands at 80 as the virus spreads across the city, home to one-fifth of Australia’s 25 million residents.

Australia has largely managed to keep the virus out of the past year and a half. The country has so far reported more than 30,000 infections and about 900 deaths among corona patients, much less than the more than 17,000 deaths registered in the smaller Netherlands.

On the other hand, Australia is largely cut off from the outside world. In most cases, foreigners are no longer allowed in. The government expects international travel to resume in the course of 2022, while many other Western countries are already reopening.

Another factor is that it is difficult to vaccinate Australians. A poll last month showed that about a third of the population is unlikely to get vaccinated. This is partly due to concerns about possible side effects.

Authorities announced on Friday that more than 7 million doses of vaccine have been administered so far. In the meantime, despite the strict border policy, they have their hands full dealing with local corona outbreaks. Rapid contact tracing and sometimes hard lockdowns are used to prevent the spread of the virus.

In July almost a hundred festivals less than in 2019

Despite the relaxation for major events in July, there are not many festivals on the agenda yet. The Festivalinfo news site informs the ANP about this upon request. There are almost a hundred fewer festivals to visit in July than in 2019.

A total of 49 festivals will take place in the Netherlands in July, according to the editor-in-chief of the Dutch festival news site. In July 2019 there were still about 146. Most of the canceled festivals have moved to 2022. Some have been moved to later in the summer or in the fall.

It is no surprise that most festivals cannot go on yet, according to Berend Schans, director of the Association of Dutch Poppodia and Festivals (VNPF). “We had to wait a long time for the guarantee fund. If it had happened sooner, organizers would have dared to make tough commitments sooner,” he says.

For example, some festivals are short on time with suppliers or they do not get the permits in time with the municipality or province. Moreover, there is still a considerable shortage of personnel here and there, says Schans. “It is customization. If you compare it with a normal year, 2021 is indeed less busy.”

From June 30, festivals can continue without major restrictions. Visitors do not have to wear a mouth cap and the one and a half meters away can also be released. They must be tested beforehand or have a vaccination certificate. In the event of multi-day events, interim tests must also be carried out.

6.35 – Lockdownleed: people under thirty received the biggest mental blow

The mental health of young people has significantly improved in the first months of this year, Trouw writes. Thirty-somethings felt exhausted almost twice as often than average during this period, they also felt listless and depressed more often and they slept worse.

At the beginning of this year, when there was a strict lockdown with curfew, they scored worse in all these areas than in the previous year, according to a survey of 30,000 inhabitants of the Northern Netherlands who took part in the Lifelines survey, which the University of Groningen and the UMCG repeated monthly throughout the corona crisis. The latest results for the month of May were published on Friday.

Across the board, the Dutch experienced more mental complaints in the first months than during the entire previous year. But where, for example, an average of 40 percent in the first three months of this year indicated that they regularly suffered from physical exhaustion, this was true for almost 70 percent of the under-30s.

6.30 – Ministers: cabinet misjudged the first shot

The cabinet has painfully misjudged the start of the vaccination campaign. By not opting for a quick ‘symbolic’ first injection, the injection program still has a failure factor, while the Netherlands has already caught up with the damage. The road to reopening has also been a struggle, with fierce battles over lockdown rules and cabinet frustrations. Ministers open a book. “We had no idea what the exact effect was.” That is what those involved from and around the cabinet say in a reconstruction of the AD of the third corona wave.

“The exact moment of starting does not matter epidemiologically in the long run, but we underestimated what this means in terms of imaging,” says a minister. “We are now perfectly in step, recently we even got rid of most of it in a week. But the image of that slow start still sticks.”

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