BELGIUM's LOCK-DOWN NOW UNTIL APRIL 19 - AT LEAST


MARCH 28:

The government here in Belgium decided yesterday to prolong the present lockdown until April 19 – in principle the first school day after the Easter vacation.  It was at the same time decided that it will be further prolonged until May 3, if circumstances require it.  

 The country has in practice in many ways come to a stand-still.  There are companies still working. Public transport functions, but with less frequency than normal. The hospitals and the health sector are, of course, working in full speed.  The hospitals still have free capacity ready, if more patients continue to come in.  Temporary hospitals are also being established.   
The rules on use of parks etc. have been strengthened, as some people do not seem to have understood that getting together in groups is not allowed due to the risk of further spread of the virus.  The police is using drones to monitor the parks. And if they discover groups of people they can via loudspeakers in the drones ask them to move on.  Shopping is food stores has also been more restricted in the sense that only one person at a time from each family is allowed to enter the shops.  We were stopped by the police the other day, when we were two in our car on our way back from shopping.
It all seems to function well in the given circumstances, including the communication.  As an example you can register to get new information from the authorities by sms  ( called BeALERT ), if you want to.  
As mentioned before I have made a special blog  LIFE WITH CORONA  (  https://life-with-corona.blogspot.com ).  The purpose is to invite people to write 10-20 lines about what they are doing, experiencing and thinking in this special lock-down situation.  Several have already contributed.    Please, join in with you short contribution – in the language you prefer.  Ok?
One more point on the crisis:  The Danish minister of finance, Nicolai Wammen, was interviewed by Christiane Amanpour on CNN last night, especially about the way Denmark has decided to try to tackle the crisis.  See the interview here:

https://twitter.com/camanpour/status/1243605476509650946?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet 



Finally, one correction:  I told yesterday about the genealogy programme GENEANET – https://en.geneanet.org/   And I wrote that this service has information on about 7 million people.  The correct figure is:  7 billion.   Many overlaps, of course.  But very impressive.  Go hunting for information about your family and ancestors!   You have probably time for it now 😊  

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