NL – The Netherlands will continue to keep nightclubs closed because of the coronavirus outbreak, with no expected date when the businesses will be allowed to reopen. At the same time, the country is loosening some rules for quarantining babies and toddlers, but the ban on shouting, singing, and chanting in groups, like at protests, sports events, and live concerts, will also continue with no specified end date.
“We hope that the clubs and discotheques can open again before there is a vaccine, but at the moment that is simply unwise. Too often outbreaks of infection have occurred [at nightclubs] in Europe,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. “I think it’s terrible for them. This sector is important for life in the Netherlands.”
In an update to the Dutch public six months after the first coronavirus patient was discovered in the Netherlands, Rutte said he understood the frustration people feel when it comes to the lingering restrictions on society meant to keep the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus from spreading further. “If there is a vaccine, we can get rid of the measures, but that is a dot on the horizon,” Rutte said. His Cabinet member, Health Minister Hugo de Jonge, said the research into a vaccine is progressing, and that the Netherlands could receive the first batch of vaccinations in early 2021.
De Jonge also presented a pessimistic possibility, saying, “In the unfortunate case that there is no vaccine, we will have to rely on treatment methods.”
