The Netherlands’ authorities launched a three-week partial lockdown to quell a fourth wave of Covid infections amid a spike in case numbers, the Associated Press reported on Friday.
It is the primary current lockdown affecting all individuals — whether or not vaccinated or not — in Western Europe, and it comes as the Netherlands registered 16,364 new cases on Thursday. That determine, a degree not seen since early within the pandemic, was a 33 % rise over the brand new cases registered a week earlier.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Hugo de Jonge, the well being minister, introduced the measures on Friday night. They will go into impact on Saturday.
Restaurants, bars and cafes within the Netherlands should shut at eight p.m., as will “essential shops” like supermarkets, a government website mentioned. Sporting occasions might be held with out spectators. Residents won’t be allowed to ask greater than 4 friends into their properties. Social distancing guidelines might be reinstated.
Art and cultural performances at cinemas, reside theaters and live performance venues won’t have obligatory closing occasions.
A crowd of protesters towards the lockdown gathered exterior the Hague, the place Mr. Rutte was talking, and a number of of them have been detained for setting off fireworks and throwing objects at police, Reuters reported.
De Telegraaf, a Dutch information outlet, published photos and social media video that confirmed police turning a water cannon on protesters. The outlet wrote that the protest had since damaged up and the streets have been calm.
Protests towards coronavirus mitigation measures have turn into commonplace in lots of European nations. In Italy on Friday, police searched the homes of four people in Milan affiliated with a motion that protests coronavirus guidelines after they have been accused of harassing journalists who’re reporting on the demonstrations.
Cases and deaths have been rising sharply in Europe as a entire, and different nations have instituted or are contemplating new restrictions. This week, the World Health Organization reported that Europe accounted for about two-thirds of the world’s 3.1 million new reported cases within the first week of November.
