No more parties in the garden, and working at
home remains key: Dutch PM
Corona August 18, 2020 - By Robin Pascoe and
Senay Boztas
Drinks
parties and gatherings at home with more than six people, excluding children,
are once again on the ‘not done’ list in the Netherlands, as the cabinet tries
to reduce the rise in the number of coronavirus cases. At the same time, the
period of quarantine for people who have been in contact with coronavirus
patients or who have travelled to risky countries, is to be reduced from 14 to
10 days. ‘Parties, drinks with the neighbours, family events… hugs, this is
where things are not going so well,’ Rutte said. ‘If you have people to your
home, the maximum is six guests, and ask if everyone is symptom free. You need
a big living room to keep 1.5 metres distance,’ the prime minister said. ‘You
can’t always do what you want.’ For bigger events, family groups should go to
bars and cafes, where safety is properly organised, he said. But here too,
officials will take a tough line on monitoring. Health minister Hugo de Jonge
said that having 50 or 60 people at a party makes the work of contact tracers
much more difficult because it takes so long to track down everyone. ‘We have
to limit our contacts,’ he said. ‘And if this does not help, then we are losing
sight of the virus… and that will be terrible for the economy.’ Home working In
addition, Rutte said, that despite rumours to the contrary, working at home
remains the primary rule. ‘There is no end date to this,’ he said. ‘People must
work at home as much as possible.’ ‘Of all rules we made at the beginning, the
most effective advice was to work from home wherever possible,’ he said. ‘The
figures don’t suggest we can relax this so the advice is to work from home
wherever possible, and that means after September 1 as well.’ Schools Despite concerns
about safety at schools, Rutte said that government advisors are convinced the
schools can go back. ‘But children should stay home if they have symptoms,’ he
said. ‘And they should also remain home if a family member tests positive.’
Officials are monitoring what is happening at schools and keeping a close eye
on how many teachers develop the virus, De Jonge said. ‘If there is a school
cluster, then the RIVM will act.’ The RIVM estimates that currently some 50,000
people are infectious, De Jonge said. ‘The number of infections must go down
and so we are taking countrywide and regional measures, adding that ‘the coming
weeks are crucial’. Amsterdam is due to make new local regulations public later
in the evening.
No new measures in Amsterdam yet, but monitoring
to be stepped up
Corona Society
August 18, 2020
Despite
expectations of tough new measures to stop the spread of coronavirus in
Amsterdam, the city’s mayor Femke Halsema has only said that enforcement of the
current rules will be stepped up and that the use of music amplifiers outdoors
is to be banned. ‘In the short term, we are stepping up the supervision of
cafes, bars and party centres,’ she said at a press conference on Tuesday
evening. ‘After one warning, they can be closed for up to four weeks.’ Parties
of over 100 people will also have to be registered with the authorities, the
mayor said. Amsterdam and Rotterdam are at the centre of the current increase
in coronavirus infections and there were 1,400 new cases in the city in the
past week. If the current increase in infections in the capital does not go
down, Halsema said she may bring in a ban on gatherings of over 100 people,
close party centres and limit private boat use, and bring in a midnight curfew
for cafes and bars. Steps are also being taken to discourage tourists, the
mayor said. A decision on these measures will be taken on August 25, the mayor
said in a separate briefing for city councillors. The mayor’s press conference
came as the flagship Amsterdam department store De Bijenkorf was ordered to
shut down for two weeks because of a coronavirus outbreak among staff. The
store, on the Dam in the centre of the city, is particularly popular with
wealthy tourists. Last weekend, city officials were forced to close off several
streets in the red light district because there were so many visitors that
social distancing was impossible. In addition, many people were ignoring the requirement to wear a face mask.
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