Two New Pfizer Vaccine Production Factories • Janssen Vaccine Research Hospitals

RIVM expects that the Delta variant of the coronavirus will soon take over the Netherlands. Within three weeks, half of the infections will be of this type. In about two months, all other variables will be replaced, according to a PowerPoint presentation by Jaap van Diesel (RIVM). The presentation (.pdf) with the RIVM forecast has already been put online, in the run-up to the House Technical Briefing beginning at 4.30pm. Van Dissel offers an explanation for this.

Until recently, the share of the delta variant in the Netherlands was very limited: 2.8% in the second week of June. But that will change dramatically, according to model studies conducted by RIVM. It rises to 50 percent by mid-July and nearly 100 percent by September or October.

It appears that the effect of the variable progression is not so bad in the short term. The PowerPoint presentation shows that on current models, hospital admissions will continue to fall this summer and an “increase in the near future” is not expected either. This is partly due to a massive vaccination campaign.

But for fall, the new variant is a “point of concern,” RIVM wrote in a letter later posted on its website. And the mutant could then cause a wave of new infections, because not everyone in the Netherlands has not yet done so. It was vaccinated or in any case not completely.