With over 15,000 positive Covid cases per day, and the Omicron variant taking over, there is an immense pressure on the health care system. Therefore, the evening lockdown has been extended until January 14th.
This means that everything is closed from 5 pm to 5 am. You may officially receive a maximum of 4 guests per day (also during Christmas).
Early Christmas break
It has been decided that (after some changes of direction) the primary schools will close one week earlier than scheduled – the last school day will be Friday, December 17th.
The schools which cannot arrange things in time, may close on Tuesday 21st the latest. They may teach remotely next week, but don’t have to. Children of parents with essential jobs may go to school still.
After the Christmas break (January 10th), the schools are supposed to re-open again.
The secondary schools and higher education will stay open (for now).
The reasoning is that, when all children stay home and especially don’t come near their grandparents and other vulnerable people, the virus won’t spread further. Then all families can celebrate Christmas safely.
In practice, I cannot imagine many families will stay home for three weeks.
And it came as too short notice for a lot of parents to arrange childcare next week because they have to work outside of the house. And then often grandparents are asked to step in…
On the other hand, the number of cases among children is very high at the moment and although they often don’t get very sick, they do spread it a lot to vulnerable people. The hospitals are full.
So, what to do about this? It is hard.
I hope these measures will be enough. At the same time, everyone is so sick and tired of it all.
Good luck entertaining your children, while trying to get some work done. This isn’t easy.
More Corona statistics on: https://coronadashboard.rijksoverheid.nl.
