“We have to learn to live with the virus.” This week it was one of the first statements by the new Minister of Health, Ernst Kuipers. The Netherlands is not ready for that for the time being, despite easing of the current hard lockdown.
Recently, there has been increasing criticism of the corona measures, often pointing to our neighboring countries: why can you go to a restaurant or the cinema just across the border? The countries around us seem to have much less trouble with the infection rates rising like a rocket. How do they deal with the omikron variant?
Belgium
In Belgium there will be no lockdown, but measures have still been taken that seem to be the norm in the Netherlands for some time. For example, you have to wear face masks in many places, working from home is mandatory, nightclubs are closed and the public is not allowed at sports competitions. The most recent measures were introduced just before Christmas.
The difference is mainly in the IC capacity, which is much larger in Belgium. The Belgians have 2000 beds for more than 11 million inhabitants. In the Netherlands there are 1150 beds for more than 17 million people. Belgium is also further with the booster campaign. “If we get nervous in Belgium, it is already pure panic in the Netherlands,” virologist Marc Van Ranst said earlier. “If there were more IC beds in the Netherlands, there probably wouldn’t be a lockdown now.”
In addition, a discussion has erupted in Belgium about treating corona as flu. Van Ranst thinks that this will be possible after the current omikron wave. By this he means that we do not have to take a laundry list of measures with each new wave – assuming that omikron is less sickening. Yet a double flu season is still intense, he says. “We have to prepare ourselves mentally that we can have twice as many deaths, but we will not upset society as a whole.”
Fellow virologist Steven Van Gucht, the face of the corona press conferences in Belgium, does not yet dare to draw that conclusion. There are still corona measures, but that is not the case during a flu season, so it is also difficult to consider corona as flu, argues Van Gucht. However, he says it will happen someday. “That will be a gradual thing, but not yet after the omikron wave.”
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