Follow the most important corona news of Tuesday 6 July here
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7:45 am – CNV: still too many corona-unsafe office places
Many workplaces are not equipped safely enough to prevent corona infections. This is the opinion of the trade union CNV after a tour of nine hundred people who returned to the office after working from home. More than one in five indicate that the office is not furnished corona-proof. One in six states that colleagues and employers do not take the corona rules into account.
CNV chairman Piet Fortuin understands that the offices will open again now that that is also allowed. “But the workplace must be safe against corona contamination. And many workplaces are not yet. Many home workers feel unsafe in the office.” If no safe place can be offered, working from home should remain the rule, says Fortuin.
The vast majority of those surveyed still partly work from home. Only 3 percent have to come to the office completely. In most cases, work is done partly at home and partly at the office. This is what 83 percent of those surveyed do.
During the corona crisis, many offices have been set up differently to prepare for hybrid working. More than one in five employees now indicates that they have trouble finding an available place in the office on busy days.
CNV also wants clear agreements about compensation now that hybrid work seems to remain for the time being. For example, both travel expenses and home working expenses should be reimbursed. “We will make agreements about this with employers in the collective labor agreement in the coming period.”
6:00 am – Number of corona cases is rising sharply: increase of 75 percent
The number of new corona cases is rising for the first time in weeks. More than 7,000 infections have probably been diagnosed in the past seven days, about 75 percent more than in the week before. The question is to what extent the increase is due to more people being tested for the coronavirus so that they can go out for a night out, and to what extent the virus is actually spreading faster and faster.
The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) reported on Tuesday how many people have tested positive in the past seven days. Last week, the institute reported that it had received 4,208 reports of new cases in the seven days prior. The week before, there were 5714 positive tests.
More than 6,300 cases have been reported in the six days since the last update. That is an average of more than 1050 positive tests per day. This could bring the weekly figure to almost 7400.
A few major outbreaks have been identified in the past week. For example, at least 180 visitors to the Aspen Valley discotheque in Enschede have tested positive. More than 600 infections have been detected in Amsterdam in the last four days, almost as many as in the two weeks before. On Monday, the capital had 245 new cases, the highest number since mid-May.
The RIVM estimates that approximately half of all new cases concern the Delta variant, the new name of the Indian variant. That could lead to a new wave of hospital admissions in the autumn.
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