AMSTERDAM: The Dutch government was set to announce new measures on Friday including early closure of bars, restaurants and most stores to stem a record-breaking wave of COVID-19 infections that is threatening to overwhelm the healthcare system.
Caretaker prime minister Mark Rutte was meeting with his Cabinet to make a final decision on what measures are needed to ensure that hospitals, stressed by a flood of new coronavirus patients, do not run out of capacity in intensive care units.
Rutte was due to hold a televised news conference announcing the decision at 1800 GMT.
The current wave of Dutch cases, running above 20,000 infections per day for the past week, has continued despite restrictions including the reintroduction of face masks and closure of bars and restaurants after 8 p.m. imposed by Rutte's government earlier this month.
The surge in the Netherlands, one of several European countries to be hit by a wave of infections, is also occurring even though 85% of the adult population have been vaccinated, with infections now rising most quickly among schoolchildren, who are not vaccinated.
A report on Thursday by national broadcaster NOS said the country's top healthcare panel had advised Rutte to close restaurants and non-essential stores by 5 p.m. -- and against closing schools. But some experts argue that school closures are needed as part of a short, near-total lockdown to regain control of the situation.
A government proposal, not yet policy, to restrict unvaccinated people from public places prompted three nights of rioting https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/dutch-pm-lashes-out-idiots-after-th... last weekend.
National security officials were meeting Friday to prepare for possible protests after the new measures are announced.
Dutch hospitals have been steadily curtailing care amid the rising coronavirus cases, with non-essential operations being cancelled or postponed from this week in order to free up beds in ICU units. Some patients have been transferred to neighbouring Germany.
The Dutch associations of house doctors and neighbourhood nurses said on Friday they too are becoming overwhelmed.
We "are doing everything we can to continue to offer the most necessary care," they said in a joint statement. "That's only possible if we postpone or don't give some normal care."
Netherlands to impose new COVID measures to avoid healthcare breakdown
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Netherlands to impose new COVID measures to avoid healthcare breakdown
- Caretaker prime minister Mark Rutte was meeting with his Cabinet to make a final decision on what measures are needed
- The current wave of Dutch cases, running above 20,000 infections per day for the past week, has continued despite restrictions
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
