Danish Prime minister Mette Frederiksen has a few hours ago announced a widespread lock down of the whole country.
- all schools and day care facilities are suspended
- all non essential public employees are sent home from Friday
- all public libraries, culture centres etc will be locked
- there’s a strong recommendation that all associations, sport clubs, religious communities etc. do the same
- all events over 100 attendees are recommended to be cancelled
- bars, night clubs etc are recommended to close
- for the two latter points it will be an outright ban as soon as the government can get it through parliament. All parties have agreed to suspend normal procedures and speed it through as fast as possible.
- Hospitals and nursing homes will limit the possibilities for visiting
And a reiteration of former measures from previous days, among others:
- avoid public transportation during rush hour.
- use other means of transport if you can
- runnning over seat capacity (standing passengers) will be banned
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The measures come in spite of Denmark being very far from the hardest hit country. But the number of cases has exploded from 35 to 514 since Monday morning. No fatalities yet as the bulk of them are still people who have gotten infected on their skiing holidays — i.e. relatively young and healthy people — and their immediate contacts.
This surely brings Denmark to the forefront of countries in terms of preventive measures. It is close to the Italian reaction, where far more people are infected, and where tracking of infection chains has all but broken down. This is not the case here, where nearly all cases can be tracked directly to holidayers returning from Italy or Austria.
Still the measure seems to go down well. The only peeps from the opposition has been something about compensations for businesses on lock down (everything from sports events to bars), but that should come as part of the mandatory closure law in the next few days.
Also in the population gravity seems to have dawned. The government has very explicitly appealed to the individual responibility that we all have to society and our fellow citizens and it seems to have worked. As late as yesterday we had a board meeting in my rowing club, and a couple of the members warned against over reacting. We still did a partial closure with cancellation of all trainings in teams. Tonight, after the decision of the lock down, we have simply closed the club, even though it isn’t mandatory. Unanimously.
The comments on social media are much the same. Even people who are directly hit in some way seem to swallow the pill, like an aquaintance of mine who was supposed to have the documentary he has been working on for years open a festival this weekend. He vented how very sorry and disappointed he was — but not a word of anger at the government or the decision. I’m sure there’s some who feel differently, but so far they take very little space in the public debate.
- edit: typo