There was another press conference tonight, held by the Prime Minister Mark Rutte. The main highlights are:
People are urgently asked, but not required, to limit home gatherings to a maximum of six guests. And if you cannot accommodate social distancing for yourself and your six guests in your apartment then you should not be inviting six people over. This advice is because most of the cases seen are occurring within private areas. An unexpected twist: Rutte advised that people who wanted to meet up should instead go to restaurants or cafés, where social distancing was easier to maintain, a health check was done, contact details were saved and fixed seating was required (all of those in theory).
People are also reminded that the rule is still ‘work as much as possible from home, where possible’. There was some unfounded hope that going back to work after 1 September would be allowed, however that was never officially said and now the number of cases are growing again. Therefore Rutte decided to make it clear that working from home would remain the norm for the foreseeable future. (See also: my work saying we’re now officially working from home until at least the New Year. Yikes!)
The length of quarantine will be reduced from 14 days to 10 days. The advice remains that you should get tested if you develop symptoms while in quarantine. While it seems counterproductive to reduce the number of days, it is the government’s attempt to weigh the smaller risk of developing symptoms during days #11-14 and making it easier for people to accept going into quarantine. At the moment the government cannot require that you go into quarantine, though they said during this press conference that they are looking into changing the law to permit that.
The RIVM posted the weekly numbers on their website earlier today; weekly updates are provided every Tuesday. Corona cases are about the same as last week, with hospitalizations and deaths slightly rising.
Later tonight the mayor of Amsterdam is expected to announce regional measures on top of what was announced nationally. Rotterdam is expected to follow with additional regional measures later this week.
In the meantime: stay safe everyone!
Life in the Hague 