- 2,588 new COVID-19 infections were reported over the past week, RIVM reports in their weekly update, on Tuesday 4 August. Hospital admissions due to COVID-19 were reported during the past week for 44 patients. 6 deaths of COVID-19 patients were reported, 3 less than the week before.The number of new people who tested positive in the Netherlands has almost doubled compared to the previous week. Approximately 10,000 fewer people have been tested in the GGD test lanes in the past week compared to the week before that. The percentage of positive tests in the Netherlands increased this week from 1.1% in the week of 20 July to 2.3% in the week of 27 July. Just like last week, the reproduction number is above 1.
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- Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Minister Hugo de Jonge of Public Health will hold a press conference on Thursday evening 19:00, to update Netherlands residents on the state of affairs around the coronavirus and the increasing number of infections, government information service RVD announced on Tuesday.During the press conference, they will point out the general situation, zoom in on the situation in certain regions and, if deemed necessary, announce additional, regional support measures,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Public Health, Welfare and Sports said. Exactly what this could entail, is not yet clear. The last press conference was held on Wednesday, 24 June.
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- Amsterdam and Rotterdam are putting up signs to inform residents and visitors where face masks will be mandatory from Wednesday 5 August. The obligation to wear a mask applies to everyone aged 13 or older, in certain crowded areas in both municipalities. The fine for violating the rule will be 95 euros, the municipalities announced on Tuesday.The measure will be introduced in phases, starting on 5 August in Amsterdam’s Red Light District, the Kalverstraat and the Nieuwendijk shopping streets, the Plein ’40 -’45 and the Albert Cuypstraat markets.
The mask rule is only for people on the streets and in shops, and does not apply to catering facilities, museums, casinos, gyms, private homes, offices or sex work locations. The area may be expanded in the future, and the city said it will re-evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot program in three to four weeks. Shops in these areas will be given posters regarding the mask obligation to put up in their stores. During busy weekends, extra workers will be on the streets to remind people to wear masks and hand out free masks to those who do not have one.
In Rotterdam, the mask obligation applies to shopping areas in the city center, including Lijnbaan, Meent, Nieuwe Binnenwegplein and Coolsingel, at the markets in Delfshaven, Afrikaanderwijk, and Binnerotte, and the roofed shopping centers Alexandrium and Zuidplein. The measure applies from 6:00 in the morning to 22:00 daily. For the markets, the mask obligation only applies on market days. City officials will be handing out free non-medical masks at these locations on Wednesday.
The mask obligations do not apply to places like gyms, restaurants and museums, as national measures already apply in these places aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus. Both municipalities stressed that the mask obligation comes on top of – and not instead of – measures already in place, such as social distancing and the instruction to avoid crowds.
Last week, The Cabinet of the Netherlands already said not to make wearing masks in public a national obligation, but that locally, different rules could be implemented experimentally by the country’s 25 different regional security councils.
Ahmed Aboutaleb, mayor of Rotterdam and chairman of Veiligheidsregio Rotterdam-Rijnmond, is pleased with this experiment. “In my view, masks can increase the urgency in some places, in addition to the golden rule of keeping 1.5 meters apart, hygiene measures and enforcement. We are ready to start the experiment and hope it helps people to stay safe in the city and keep enough distance from each other.”
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- The GGD tested nearly 102,000 people in the Netherlands for the corona virus in the past week. That is about ten thousand less than last week, according to a weekly update of the GGD-GHOR on Monday. It is the first time since the beginning of July that the number of corona tests per week has decreased.The GGD does not know why the number of tests has now decreased. “It may be that people were scared by the waiting time, which increased because many more people suddenly wanted to be tested and the GGDs had to scale up,” says public health director Sjaak de Gouw of the GGD-GHOR Monday in NPO Radio 1- program News & Co. In a month, the number of people who had a weekly test for the coronavirus increased from approximately 65,000 to 100,000 people.
The holiday can also play a role, he says. “We had the impression that people got tested before they went on vacation to make sure they didn’t have it.”
However, De Gouw does not know the exact causes. “We regularly ask people about their willingness to get tested, but of the people who don’t call us, we can’t figure out why they don’t,” he says.
In the last two weeks, the daily number of detected infections rose steadily. Monday is the fifth consecutive day that more than three hundred people tested positive for the coronavirus.
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- Retail turnover was 9.8% higher in June this year compared to June 2019, Statistics Netherlands reports. This is the largest growth since the start of the publication of shopping day-adjusted figures in 2005. Sales volume was 7.2% higher. Both the food sector and the non-food sector realized higher turnover. In addition, online turnover was over 45% more.On the other hand, clothing stores and the shoe and leather goods stores have been suffering heavy sales losses for months. Despite the second quarter’s record sales, retailers are less optimistic about the third quarter, the CBS said.
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- Booking.com announced that it has to cut about a quarter of its worldwide jobs due to the coronavirus crisis. That means that some 4 thousand to 5 thousand of the total 17,500 jobs will disappear. What this means for the around 6 thousand people working for Booking.com in Amsterdam, is not yet clear.”Unfortunately, due to the corona crisis, like many other travel organizations we have to take the very difficult step of shrinking our global workforce with the intention that this will affect up to 25% of the global workforce,” a spokesperson for Booking.com said to NOS. The company saw bookings fall by 85% in April.
The American accommodation booking site is one of the largest employers in Amsterdam. Around 6 thousand people work at the Booking.com head office and ten other offices in the Dutch capital. The spokesperson could not tell NOS how the layoffs would affect its Dutch workers.
Booking.com made use of the government’s NOW regulation and received 64.5 million euros in subsidy so it could continue to pay its workers in the Netherlands. The spokesperson told NOS that without this NOW regulation, the number of employees affected by this reorganization would be much higher.
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- Potentially thousands of ANVR travel vouchers for “package holidays” cancelled due to the coronavirus crisis are not guaranteed if the travel organization goes bankrupt during the term of the voucher, the Consumentenbond warned on Tuesday. The fund meant to guarantee that customers’ holidays will still be paid for only covers cancelled bookings made before 16 March, De Telegraaf reported.Because travel agencies did not have sufficient cash to refund all holidays cancelled due to the pandemic, travel agencies’ umbrella organization ANVR, guarantee fund SGR and the Ministry of Economic Affairs agreed that the agencies could give customers vouchers instead of the refund they are legally entitled to. The SGR would guarantee this voucher, to ensure that the customer’s replacement holiday is paid for.
But according to consumers’ association Concumentenbond, this only applies to bookings made before 16 March. ANVR CEO Frank Oostdam confirmed this to the Telegraaf. “This was not known to all our members, so an unknown number of vouchers for bookings made after mid-March are not guaranteed,” he said.
Figures from the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed that some 400 million euros of ‘covered’ ANVR vouchers have not yet been claimed, despite holidays being possible in most of Europe since June.
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