We are beginning to hear some good news in these challenging times. The physical distancing measures seem to be working in many countries, including the Netherlands. And the rate of infection is slowing somewhat, even in disease hotspots such as Italy and Spain. In many places, therefore...
The coronavirus crisis has given rise to numerous initiatives by governments around the world to combat the pandemic by gathering, sharing, and transferring data, both personal and anonymized. A great deal of attention has been given to proposals for increased data gathering within the EU, and many...
Today in times of pandemic hospitals face a crisis of scarce resources. In many places this has already led to measures of triage where critical medical care is rationed to those who are most likely to benefit from it. In other places, it is clear that such measures will soon need to be taken.
Slowly but surely we are getting a picture of the many short-term effects COVID-19 is having on the Dutch criminal justice system. In a limited amount of time, many different and far-reaching measures have been taken to adapt to the new circumstances. Courts are closed and only urgent cases are...
With the appearance of COVID-19, a disease caused by a novel coronavirus, we need to search for magic bullets, because there is currently no known treatment for the cause of the disease and the therapies being used are focused on treating the symptoms.
Last Sunday, when we all got the government alert on our mobile phones to stay at least 1.5 metres away from each other, we were reminded to ensure ‘social distancing’ as a measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19. We must follow this advice as it is in our common interest. Although, I don’t like...
The coronavirus pandemic is certainly the greatest crisis that most of us here in Europe have been confronted with in our lifetime. It affects the lives of every one of us, our families, loved ones, our colleagues and neighbours. The fact that this is a new virus which leads to a contagious disease...
There seems to be only one topic in the media these days—the new coronavirus and the disease it is causing, COVID-19. In addition to television, the internet and the newspapers, we are being bombarded with opinions and news on social media. Our recommendation is to read those with caution...
The corona virus is causing education to move from offline to online. In the Netherlands, the government and higher education institutions announced last Thursday (12 March 2020) that all in-person education has to be replaced by online education. Online means more reliance on technology. So here...
