Kralendijk/The Hague- The Dutch Central Government today announced even stricter measures to combat the spread of the Corona-virus in The Netherlands. Although infections have shown a downward trend over the last few days, the Cabinet of PM Rutte feels it is not going fast enough.

As part of the additional measures announced today, Prime Minister Rutte discouraged travelers to travel for vacation purposes until at least January 15, 2021. “Most countries in the world have either a orange or red code”, said Rutte. The PM indicated that the Cabinet has a fear that travelers will import new infctions into The Netherlands, as happened last years with travelers returning from winter sport vacations.

“For this measure, we do not consider the Dutch Caribbean Islands” as other countries, said Rutte. This means that Travel to all 6 Dutch Caribbean islands can continue, as long as they are not classified as Code orange.

Bonaire

In spite of the potentially good news from PM Rutte, it remains to be seen what the measure actually means for Bonaire. Bonaire’s Island Governor Edison Rijna, on September 21, 2020 requested the Dutch Government to change the island’s code from yellow (low risk) to orange (medium risk), in reaction to increased local infections.

Now that the island has know close to 0 infections for various weeks Rijna has requested The Hague to change the island’s status back to yellow but this so far has not been effected. “This is taking longer than expected” said Rijna, who had previously said that he expeced the Dutch Government to change Bonaire’s code withing 1 – 2 days.

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