Many countries around us do not have such a strict lockdown as the OMT now advises in the Netherlands. How is that possible? According to Amrish Baidjoe, field epidemiologist and microbiologist, this is mainly because the Netherlands relaxed too quickly in the summer and started the booster campaign later.
“In the Netherlands we are already in a very serious scenario,” Baidjoe says in the newspaper NOS Radio 1 News. According to the field epidemiologist, we not only relaxed too quickly in the summer, but also waited too late to introduce new measures. “We are still at a very bad level in terms of pressure on care; there is still a lot of delayed care and the situation is far from normal.”
The microbiologist also says that the booster shot makes an important difference. “We have to put pressure on the booster campaign, I cannot emphasize enough how fast that has to be.” He also mentions that 1.3 million people in the Netherlands have not yet had a first injection. “And of course they also run an increased risk.”
The first data on the increased spread of the new corona variant omikron are also very worried, says Baidjoe. We do not yet know exactly whether the variant also makes people sicker than the delta variant, but the variant may well be good at circumventing the existing immunity. “So the first data shows that vaccinated people and people who have recovered are less well protected.”
Baidjoe therefore calls the measures proposed by the OMT – to close, among other things, the catering industry, gyms and the cultural sector – good advice. “It can certainly help, because the measures aim to greatly reduce the number of contact moments between people and groups of people. We don’t know exactly how much it will help, of course, but an inhibition is already very important.”
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