The current lockdown will slow down a new wave of infections and hospital admissions, but they cannot be prevented, the RIVM warns. The cause is the rapid advance of the more contagious omikron variant of the coronavirus. How high the wave gets depends partly on the damping effect of the measures and the booster campaign.
Omikron accounted for 10 to 15 percent of the infections last weekend, probably half by the end of this week and will be dominant before the end of the year.
“We expect that the combination of booster shots and the current measures can greatly dampen the effect of omikron,” says epidemiologist Susan van den Hof of the RIVM. “The extent to which this is successful depends on the pathogenic capacity of this variant. If that turns out to be not too bad, the peak in hospitals will become slightly less high. If it is not easy, then that peak will be really high.”
The RIVM warned today in a message on own website of “an increase that may well exceed healthcare capacity”.
Yet, as can be concluded from Van den Hof’s words, the upcoming omikron wave does not have to last very long. Once the adult population has received its booster shot, she believes it should be possible to reduce the number of infections again. “The booster seems to be very helpful in boosting the lost protection against omikron.”
Railway timetable
This morning, Mariska van Blankers, director of the vaccination program, told the House of Representatives that it is the intention that “at the latest in the second half of January” all over 18s have received an additional shot. This makes it possible to create a kind of timetable for the course of the next month and a half.
If the predictions are correct, then around New Years the number of positive tests, which is now in a steady decline, will increase again. Seven to ten days later, as is now customary, this translates into an increase in the number of hospital admissions. That is risky, because the occupancy in those hospitals has been at a high level for some time now and there is therefore little ‘buffer’ to deal with a new wave.
‘Boosteroffensief’
The risk of an acute care infarction depends on the answer to the question of exactly how sickening omikron is. There are different signals about this from different countries. Van den Hof thinks that there will only be something meaningful to say for the Netherlands in the course of January. So at the moment when the new variant has been dominant for about three weeks and the exact effect has become more crystallized.
“But remember”, Van den Hof warns, “that even if omikron turns out to be less sickening than delta, it does lead to many extra infections, which can still lead to a sharp increase in the number of hospital admissions.”
Before 1 February, the current “booster offensive”, as Van Blankers described it, should therefore be completed and the reproduction number should be able to fall below 1 again. Meanwhile, the manufacturers are working hard on updates to the vaccines. But it is expected to be months before they are widely available.
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