RIVM: 'Really too early to call corona a flu'

One infection record after another is being broken while there are more and more indications that an infection with the omikron variant is milder. Are the current quarantine rules still tenable now that there are gaps in healthcare and education? And why does RIVM still use old data in the models?

The Outbreak Management Team (OMT) met yesterday about a new corona advice to the cabinet. Prior to the consultation, the NOS spoke with OMT chairman Jaap van Dissel, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Control (CIb) and chief modeler Jacco Wallinga, both from RIVM.

Het According to the OMT, the number of infections could soon rise to 100,000 per day. If they all have an average of three contacts, 400,000 people will have to be in isolation or quarantine every day. What does this mean?

Jaap van Dissel: “These kinds of numbers mainly mean that there are a lot of infections going around in the population. We do think that those omikron infections have a lot of will put lower pressure on hospitals than was previously the case with delta.”

Should anything change in the current quarantine rules?

Van Dissel: “I do think that we need to look critically again at the rules . applying the rules that will soon also apply to a number of crucial professions more widely: a daily self-test and a PCR test on day five. Then you accept a little more risk.”

99 percent of people now have mild or no symptoms after being infected with omikron. Does this mean that the corona epidemic is starting to look like a major flu wave?

Van Dissel: “It is really too early to call corona a flu. You don’t know yet what new variants will appear after the omikron. The fact that the current variant seems less sickening is a win, but it is no guarantee that this will also be the case with the next variant.”

Is it with Do you still need the current hospital figures to keep the catering industry and culture closed?

Van Dissel: “That requires a broader calculation and we will first discuss this in the OMT. It is true that if you let go of measures that cause the number of infections to rise, the number of admissions can still become high.”

The risk of serious illness is high. in the elderly and the frail. What if all measures are released, except for the 1.5 meters and the mouth caps, with the urgent advice that vulnerable people better protect themselves?

Van Dissel: ” You can consider this, but then you must first calculate whether it also makes sense.”

The OMT advice in which it is advised about possible relaxations relies heavily on the scenarios that modeller Wallinga calculates. On Thursday, during a technical briefing in the House of Representatives it appeared again that until recently he still used assumptions about the delta variant to estimate the expected number of IC recordings of the omikron variant.

Why?

Jacco Wallinga: “We still don’t know everything about the omikron variant. Sometimes we suspect that a property differs from the delta variant, but we can’t calculate that yet. For example for the probability of an IC admission, we therefore still calculate with the probability that applies to the delta variant.”

During the briefing, it was stated that the probability of an IC admission is “certainly” adjusted in the RIVM model. The chance goes from 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 or 15. What is that certainty based on?

Van Dissel: “Based on studies from the United Kingdom , the US and Denmark. But this immediately points to the problem, because a study from California indicates favorable opportunities, but reports from New York say that hospitals there are again under enormous stress. The picture is not yet consistent, but average On the whole, we think that we are now maintaining somewhat too high percentages.”

When did RIVM actually receive information for the first time about the much lower chance of an IC admission?

Wallinga: “The first data came from the British Imperial College. It concerned reports 49 and 50. There were also reports from the United States. But if you If you check this, you will see that there are nuances in this. Is that the chance for IC admission for all people with omikron or only for people with a reinfection? to the Netherlands.”

The reports to which Wallinga refers were published on 16 and Dec 22 published. These reports therefore indicated that the number of IC admissions could possibly be halved with omikron.

So while the RIVM has been thinking for some time that the number of IC admissions will be lower, were old data still used in the OMT consultation?

Wallinga: “The way we deal with it is by indicating that all charts should have a story. That story should state that it concerns forecasts, which may be too optimistic or too pessimistic. It is a way of communicating within the OMT and I understand it is difficult to understand. A chart without that story is perhaps less suitable for public information.”

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