The Consultation Committee met on Friday under crushing pressure to tighten the lockdown in Belgium. Non-essential shops and holiday parks are closing, the autumn holidays are extended and only one close contact is allowed to visit your home at a time.
–
Despite the measures that the governments in our country took to contain the new corona virus, demanded experts from different fields a second lockdown in recent days. ‘The spread of the virus is not slowing down‘virologist Steven Van Gucht also stated Friday afternoon. ‘The pain threshold has already been exceeded in our hospitals’, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo pointed out during the press conference Friday evening, on which the new measures were announced. “We need to break this rapid rise of the virus as radically and as quickly as possible.”
These new measures are therefore imposed from Sunday night up to and including December 13:
Social contact
- The rule of receiving four people in your home is canceled
- Each family member is allowed to have one more close contact, the so-called ‘hug contact’
- Families may only invite one cuddly contact into their home at a time. No other visitors can be received at home.
- Singles are allowed to have two close contacts to combat loneliness and isolation, but they too should not pass by at the same time
- If you go outside and keep your distance, you may still come together with a maximum of four people to talk, walk, cycle, etc.
Getting around
- There is no restriction for non-essential movements: in other words, you can go wherever you want in our country (see ‘travel’ for trips abroad)
Contact professions
- Non-medical contact professions, such as hairdressers, make-up artists, masseurs and beauty salons, have to step down
Shops & catering
- The catering industry remains closed
- Non-essential stores must close
- Food stores and supermarkets thus remain open: hoarding is not necessary for anything
- Take away service is still allowed
- Home deliveries are still allowed
- To maintain a level playing field, supermarkets and markets (with fewer than 200 people) limit their offerings to what is offered in the essential stores. Suddenly selling washing machines and electric bicycles is therefore not allowed.
- Garages and bicycle shops only carry out repairs
Education
- The autumn holidays are extended until November 15th.
- For secondary education, pupils of the second and third stage transfer to a maximum of 50 percent contact education and this at least until December 1.
- Distance learning is provided for higher education: to freshmen until 1 December, for senior students at least until the end of 2020
- Teachers meet online, and this also applies to educational study days
- No physical team building events are allowed
Recreation & hotels
- Holiday parks and campsites must close (attention: this rule, unlike all other measures, only takes effect from November 3)
- From Monday morning, all indoor and outdoor activities in holiday parks and campsites are already prohibited. Swimming pools will be closed. Meals must be taken in the cottages themselves, per family.
- Zoos close
- Bars and restaurants in hotels and b & bs must close: only eating meals in the room is still possible
To travel
- Foreign travel is strongly discouraged
- The borders are not closed
To work
- Telework will be compulsory wherever possible
- Where telework is not possible, mouth masks and ventilation are mandatory
- Company canteens must close
Funerals & Weddings
- Funerals will still be able to take place, but with a maximum of 15 people
- Marriages take place only in the presence of the spouses, witnesses and civil registrars
- Coffee tables and receptions are no longer allowed
Curfew
- There will be no national curfew
- The regions will decide whether and for how long any curfew applies
– .
