Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
Prime Minister Netherlands, Mark Rutte, apologizes for his government’s mistake in deciding to relax the rules for dealing with the pandemic so that daily cases Covid-19 soared.
“There was a misjudgment. We thought we could loosen up, but we didn’t. We are sad and we apologize,” Rutte said, as quoted AFP, Monday (12/7).
Rutte made this apology after 9,300 people were reported positive for Covid-19 on Sunday (11/7). A day later, the Netherlands also reported 8,500 new coronavirus infections.
This figure has increased rapidly because two weeks ago, the average daily Covid-19 case in the Netherlands was only 500.
“The recent increase has been faster than expected,” said Rutte.
Rutte and the Dutch Minister of Health, Hugo de Jonge, have seen an increase in these cases from last week.
They have also re-implemented a number of social distancing rules on Friday last week, including closing nightclubs, one of the places where the Delta variant of Covid-19 spread among young people.
“We saw an exponential increase in cases, especially among the 18-25 year olds. Outside that age group, there was no increase in height,” said Rutte.
On Friday, de Jonge said that in fact, 80 percent of the Dutch population had been vaccinated at least once.
However, virologists are concerned that young people are transmitting Covid-19 to older age groups who have not received the coronavirus vaccination.
Overall, the Netherlands has reported 1.73 million cases of Covid-19 with 17,765 deaths since the pandemic began last year.
(has)
– .
