Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (Labor Party) announces new corona measures already this week.
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– The situation is serious. The spread of infection is too high. And we have to take measures to limit that development, says the Prime Minister to NTB.
Hospital admissions are higher than ever before in the pandemic, with 331 hospitalized on Sunday. At the same time, the infection continues to rise, and just last week just over 32,000 new cases were registered. In a new risk assessment, the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) predicts the omicron variant will lead to “significantly increased spread of infection” in the future.
Støre says the goal now will be to control the infection through the winter.
– It has two purposes, he says.
– One is to avoid the health service being overloaded, so that it affects the work they have to do, both in the hospitals and in the municipalities. The second is to ensure that the social and economic burden does not become greater than necessary.
Omikron «changes the rules of the game»
It is omikron that challenges us, the Prime Minister states.
So far, 958 cases of the new virus variant have been detected in Norway. Omikron is believed to be more contagious than previous variants, and the vaccines appear to provide poorer protection against infection.
At the same time, there is hope that the variant can be milder than delta. But this is still uncertain.
– Omikron changes the rules of the game. Today we do not have enough knowledge about the mutation, says Støre.
He emphasizes that the capacity of the health care system must be protected. At the same time, high sickness absence is a concern.
– It requires that we continuously adjust our measures. And we also have to do that now towards Christmas.
– Already this week?
– Yes, with the development we are seeing now, there will be new measures.
– What type of adjustments are coming?
– We will return to that quickly. We work with this every day and receive regular updates, and NIPH and the Norwegian Directorate of Health close knowledge gaps. But it is now especially the National Institute of Public Health’s analyzes of the spread and growth in the rate of infection that we use as a basis for measures.
Infection control and vaccination
The Prime Minister announces that the new measures will go along two tracks.
One is to flatten the spread of infection by limiting the number of social contacts.
– There is every reason to believe that the measures that have been introduced have an effect on the infection. But as the situation is now, we do not have time to wait and see the effect of the measures that have all been introduced, says Støre.
The second is vaccination.
– There we are well underway. But we are looking at the possibility of doing it even better.
Støre does not go into more detail on how this can happen, but one question that the health authorities have been considering recently is the vaccination of children aged five to eleven years.
Another issue is the rollout of the third dose for adults.
Promises Christmas celebration
The announcement of new austerity measures comes less than a week after the government’s previous package of measures.
But we just have to get used to such changes, Støre believes. He emphasizes that he was careful to make reservations about this when the previous package of measures was presented.
– I also said then that we may have to come back with new measures quickly. And if we get knowledge about it, then we will not hesitate.
– Will it be possible to celebrate Christmas this year?
– Yes, it will be.
– Are we heading for a shutdown?
– We must prepare for measures that unfortunately interfere with people’s everyday lives.
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