“With what is now known, the disease does not seem very contagious. The disease also does not seem to be easily transmitted from person to person, ”RIVM tweeted in the morning of January 29. With the knowledge of today a remarkable message, but at the time there was still plenty of research into the new virus. No patients have turned up in the Netherlands at that time. But in China there are already 571 known infections, major attractions in epicenter Wuhan are closed and in France the virus is already floating around.
We now know that the coronavirus is actually very contagious. As far as is known, a corona patient infects two to three other people on average (without the measures as currently applicable in the Netherlands). With the common flu, this number is 1.3. Whether the virus is also transmissible if you do not show any symptoms is still unclear, RIVM assumes “the sicker the more contagious”.
Have we underestimated corona?
On to February 14, there is still no corona patient in the Netherlands at that time. Aura Timen from RIVM explains in a video on Twitter that we do not have to worry about the new virus. If a patient is suspected, he will be tested immediately and if the result is positive, isolation and a contact examination will follow. At that time it is the standard approach: people who come back from China or from winter sports in Northern Italy must report if they receive complaints.
The results of those tests give hope: then Minister Bruins reports on February 27 in a special broadcast about corona that no one of the sixty tests was positive. Good news, the virus has not yet reached the Netherlands. A few minutes later he receives a note in his hands live during the broadcast: the first corona patient is in Tilburg hospital.
Did carnival play a role?
The first patient, a man from Loon op Zand, still celebrated carnival in Tilburg a few days before his admission. Two other corona patients also turned out to have partyed in Tilburg five days later. The conclusion is obvious: the busy Brabant carnival has enabled the rapid spread of corona in the Netherlands. But according to the RIVM, the three patients were not contagious during carnival (because: not sick) and no suspicious cases of pneumonia were reported in the hospitals in Brabant in early March.
Little is left of that certainty. Last Wednesday, RIVM director Jaap van Dissel joined Nieuwsuur. Behind him a graph with the degree of infection of people (the extent to which a corona patient can infect others). On February 24 a carnival crown is drawn, there is a clear peak there. Van Dissel: “This is due to the carnival celebrations, which of course involved intensive contacts. It was easy for the virus to skip. ” In the meantime, we also read many stories about (ex-) patients who have become ill after a winter sports holiday. Was winter sports, perhaps together with carnival, sometimes the major culprit?
Contact investigation turned out not to be the way
Contact research could provide the answer to that question. In that case, it is examined per infection where the patient has been and with whom he has had contact. It was also the method that RIVM has mentioned in its tweets since January, and why we “shouldn’t have worried”. But that method does not seem to work.
On March 12, Jaap van Dissel of RIVM reports in a press conference that North Brabant is “entering a new phase”. The infections (at that time 273 in our province) are “possibly further than we previously thought.” The approach of identifying, isolating and finding contacts has not worked, the virus has made many people sick, especially in Brabant. Many of them have only mild complaints, so that no GP or hospital has been involved.
This requires a new approach with new measures. Those measures will continue to come, on March 23 the cabinet decides to switch to an “intelligent lockdown”. They seem to work: on Wednesday Van Dissel reported a slight flattening in the increase in the number of new patients. It is too early to be really enthusiastic, next weekend we will notice whether we have the coronavirus under control.
Read all about the coronavirus on our special theme page.
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