A second lockdown is not on the agenda for the Minister of the Interior, Pieter de Crem. He said this on the Flemish TV channel VTM. “We don’t want it but we never know. If we are facing a second wave, then we have another scenario. It will be testing and tracing. But there will never again be new measures as restrictive as during the first confinement “, promises the federal minister.
Yves Van Laethem, inter-federal spokesperson for the fight against the coronavirus, offered his expertise on this subject this Monday morning on BEL RTL: “As an infectious disease specialist, I will probably be more nuanced. In a pandemic, as long as we do not have a drug that kills the microbe, and which improves the vital prognosis, as long as we do not have a vaccine, (and this will not be the case before autumn or winter), there are only two possibilities: to do what we are doing for the moment, that is to say to detect the cases and make their follow-up (which we weren’t able to do during the first wave). And that of course it will have to be intensified, if new cases appear. And if that is not enough and well it is to cut the transmission barriers and the only way is to protect people. So we call it whatever we like, but we call it lockdown. “
But could we envisage a more flexible or more targeted lockdown if a second wave were to break out with us?
“Absolutely. One of the possibilities is if the situation is not too generalized or too important, it is to make a geographically limited lockdown, or a lockdown by age or risk class. would be first steps and if there is no way to do otherwise, we arrive at the classic lockdown, more or less modulated in its intensity but this will involve a cessation of certain commercial activities and means of communication, as long as we have no other means “, explains the expert.
– .
