As my country started with measures around the 12th of March, which got stricter last week, I thought it might be interesting to give some insights how another country is doing, as I think we might be a bit ahead of the US curve. My country is the Netherlands, about 17,2 million citizens (very dense 1100 people per square mile, comparable to Chicago). First Coronavirus patient was on the 27th of February. 10.866 cases, 3.483 hospitalized (total, some home again), 771 deaths , average age of people dying is around 80 years old, but we have also young people on the IC, I think the youngest is 16.
We don't get accurate figures of how many are cured again, as people don't have to report back. Today it jumped from 6 to 253 cured people, most likely people who were hospitalized, I guess.
We had about 2-3 days of hoarding toilet paper and other stuff, and then we basically stopped (and with that we are non-hoarding champions in Europe, I read
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Our measures have been in place for 2,5 weeks, since 12th of March: working from home, schools closed a few days later, social distancing, only necessary trips, no big events. Last week measures got stricter with no groups over 3, options for mayors to close down areas like markets or parks, beaches etc. fines etc. Hospitals are working together and patients are spread over the different hospitals to make sure the hospitals in the hotspot are not getting overloaded. The first hotspot, where it all started for us, is actually seeing a decrease, but there are new hotspots developing. Not everyone gets tested, your GP has to refer you. Hospital staff gets tested more and quicker.
The experts are now carefully optimistic, they see that the curve has flattened a bit. They can see that the increase in new cases slows down. There are still new cases every day, but less than expected without measures. It is still too early to draw any real conclusions. In the next few days we will see if we continue with these measures or if they will get stricter. My guess is it will stay like this. I read the mayor in one of the hotspot cities said that he expects the measures to continue for at least another month.
We still have enough beds in the IC, and there are more ventilators coming.
The experts think the peak is going to be late April now. With that we would be following the same pattern as Wuhan, where about 2 months where after the lockdowns life slowly will start to get back to normal.
