Intensive care doctor Diederik Gommers believes that outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte and healthcare minister Hugo de Jonge should have apologized for the corona policy during the press conference on Friday evening. “Do not understand why Rutte and De Jonge did not just say sorry at the press co,” Gommers writes on Instagram on Sunday.
According to Gommers, it was logical that the high number of corona infections after the relaxation was not predicted in the RIVM models. “Our 'old' behavior was not taken into account as a result of the cabinet's overly positive statements and the access tests that were not in order.”
The IC doctor cannot yet say with certainty whether we should be concerned about a 'fourth wave' of corona infections. “We just don't know that at the moment,” Gommers writes. What is clear is that the relaxations have been thought too rosy. “It all seemed so beautiful at the end of June, because hospital and ICU admissions with Covid patients fell like a spear. That was also always the yardstick for any relaxation. There were warnings from England about the Delta variant, but we hoped we were a little further along with our full vaccinations.”
However, the Delta variant spreads much more easily and unvaccinated people are more susceptible and get sicker, says Gommers. The doctor emphasizes that with a more aggressive virus you need fewer people to let the ICs overflow again. “Instead of 12 million adults in 2020, there will now be 3 million unvaccinated by the fall of 2021. You only need 1000 critically ill patients to get the ICUs overflowing again. Hopefully we will be there in time, but it has clearly become less positive.”
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