RIVM hopes to approach this in a different way. Not only through sewer measurements, but also using the Nivel Sentinel station, a network of nearly 140 general practitioners who send samples every week to see which diseases are prevalent. However, it was rare for anyone to file a complaint, so very few samples came to be tested.
Two weeks ago, the weekly return home in the Netherlands was 47 samples, only one of which was positive for corona. There is very little close monitoring of how the coronavirus spreads in the Netherlands.
The hospital finds a new variable
In big cities there is a group of researchers working with GGD to develop a rapid detection system for corona variants. Using special technology, UMC Amsterdam is able to analyze a positive test for GGD within 24 hours of changing the variant.
Since the elderly and the frail in particular are still being tested, this alone doesn’t give you a representative sample, molecular microbiologist Marcel Jungs admits. “Fortunately, we also tested many of our health care staff, young, full of life. This allows you to predict how the virus will spread.”
Samples from Jonges Laboratories showed that the micron BA2 variant prevalent in the Netherlands now accounts for only 69 percent of all infections in Amsterdam. These variants are increasingly being replaced by BA4 and BA5 variants which are crossed from South Africa. Last week 15 percent, this week 17 percent. According to Jonges, this is nothing to worry about, because the variant doesn’t look any more disgusting than the original omicron variant.
–
–
“Pop culture specialist. Faithful foodie. Friendly music practitioner. Proud twitter fan. Social media freak. Travel nerds.”
—-
–
