Indoor gatherings in the Netherlands will now be limited to a maximum of two guests per household until at least mid-January, Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced Saturday. That number is extended slightly around Christmas and New Year’s Eve to four guests.
Non-essential shops, hospitality venues and cultural institutions will also be closed, while schools will remain shut until at least January 9.
In a televised address, Rutte said the lockdown was “unavoidable because of the fifth wave that is coming at us with the Omicron variant,” Reuters reported.
Failure to act now would likely lead to “an unmanageable situation in hospitals,” Rutte added.
The Netherlands had already been battling a fresh wave of Covid-19 cases before the Omicron strain reached its shores last month. Some experts are now predicting it will become the dominant variant in the country before the end of the year.
Elsewhere in Europe, there is a looming sense of dread that despite the vaccine rollout, this year’s Christmas will look a lot like 2020 as Omicron spreads at a phenomenal rate in parts of the continent.
London declares ‘major incident’
Elsewhere, the United Kingdom is in the grip of a surge in Omicron infections, with Health Secretary Sajid Javid telling the BBC on Sunday that he could not rule out restrictions before Christmas.
The Omicron variant now accounts for around 60% of Covid-19 cases in England, Javid also told Sky News Sunday.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Javid said that while a lot was still unknown about the severity of Omicron, the UK did know it was facing “a tsunami of infections in the coming days and weeks.”
“Omicron spreads at a pace we have never seen before and has been doubling about every two to three days. Yesterday saw more than 90,000 new cases reported across the UK. We are extremely confident the number of infections — people with the disease but who have not been confirmed by a test — is significantly higher than that,” Javid wrote on Sunday.
His…
Source : cnn
