As cases continue to rise in the Netherlands, the Dutch government has said it will maintain heavy public spending in an effort to counter the losses from the pandemic despite its finances worsening.
In his annual speech outlining the government’s new budget on Tuesday, King Willem-Alexander said:
In these insecure times, the government chooses not to cut spending, but to invest, in job security, social safety nets and a stronger economy.”
The government’s deficit is set to balloon to 7% of gross domestic product this year and 4% in 2021, while national debt is expected to hit 60% of GDP next year, as support for workers and companies struck by the pandemic is extended well into 2021.
After years of austerity, the Dutch government had realised a surplus of almost 2% last year and had brought down its debt to 49% of GDP.
But confidence in the economy has eroded quickly in recent months, and a national poll published on Thursday showed more than half the respondents expected the economic downturn to worsen in the coming year.
A third of workers in the Netherlands said coronavirus had already negatively impacted their job.
Netherlands hits daily record of coronavirus cases
New coronavirus cases in the Netherlands have hit a daily record of 1,379 in the past 24 hours, according to Dutch daily newspaper de Volkskrant.
On Monday, health authorities in the country recorded 1,300 new infections, it said. The rise means Covid-19 cases have increased by 9,194 in a week – 85% more than in the first week of September when 4,917 new cases were recorded.
Most new infections recorded on Tuesday were reported in Amsterdam and The Hague.
Ireland has set out new rules for its quarantine-free travel “green list”, allowing visitors from countries with a Covid-19 infection rate of under 25 cases per 100,000 over the past fortnight to skip the 14-day isolation.
Previously the green list was made up of countries with lower infection rates than Ireland, but the government stopped updating the list when the number of cases there surged to 45 per 100,000 people during the past two weeks.
Prime minister Micheál Martin said the government would soon publish a new list and would then adopt a coordinated EU system of travel restrictions he said would be approved at an EU general affairs council meeting on 13 October.
Concern is mounting in the UK about a backlog in its coronavirus testing system that has caused people in areas with the highest infection rates to be unable to get a test.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the House of Commons Speaker, has joined MPs speaking out about the unavailability of coronavirus tests. He says he is receiving “numerous complaints” and that the situation is “completely unacceptable”.
I am receiving numerous complaints from residents unable to book a test after displaying Covid symptoms. This is completely unacceptable and totally undermines track and trace so I have raised my concerns with Ministers to push for action to be taken as a matter of urgency.
Meanwhile, Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon said: “I do have a concern about the capacity constraints right now in the UK-wide system,” Sturgeon said, adding that the issue in Scotland was not about access to testing slots, but of sufficient laboratory processing.
You can follow updates on the issue – understood to have been caused by a backlog at laboratories which process the tests.
Millions of school students in Pakistan have returned to classes after schools and colleges were closed for six months due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Educational institutes were closed in March but the government announced a staggered reopening last week as daily infection numbers are falling.
“May God make us successful in this test, and may the loss suffered by the students be compensated,” education minister Shafqat Mahmood told reporters in Islamabad.
Students attend their first class at a reopened secondary school in Karachi, Pakistan, on Tuesday.
Senior schools were the first to restart, with middle school set to go back next week and primary school the week after.
The long closure led to the cancellations of exams and left academic calendars in disarray.
Mahmood warned that schools that did not following precautionary measures, including the wearing of masks and social distancing, would be closed.
Pakistan has recorded 302,424 cases of the coronavirus and more than 6,300 deaths but daily infections have been slowing from a peak of nearly 7,000, and 118 deaths, in one day in June.
On Monday, authorities reported 404 new cases and six deaths.
Denmark’s coronavirus reproduction rate at 1.5
Hospitality venues in Copenhagen have been ordered to limit their opening hours following a rise in Covid-19 cases in Denmark.
