Dear Hans,

With tears in my eyes I sat on Saturday watching the report of Nieuwsuur from Brabant. I am very worried about what is happening in my province right now. I myself live in the middle of the epicenter of #corona outbreak, as the NIS reporter recently reported in the news.

A lot of people get infected. A lot of people are dying. Many people are afraid. There's a lot of grief. And much we do not find in the numbers, confirm caregivers and also the RIVM. Do we really see to a sufficient extent how great this misery really is?

The general practitioner from Uden in the Nieuwsur-report told me that he normally has to deal with a death in the week in his practice. Now there are one or two deaths a day. The funeral companies and crematoria in our region can not meet the demand. The undertaker ordered twice as many caskets as they normally need. The crematoria will now also be open on Sundays, because otherwise they will not be able to give everyone a goodbye.

That parting in corona time is actually inhuman. In periods of loss and great sorrow you want to be there for each other, be together. But that should not be. I experienced it myself with a farewell to my uncle and my aunt two weeks ago. When I parted with my uncle, I stood with a handful of relatives and a coffin in an otherwise large, empty auditorium of the DELA. Very unreal. I did not attend my aunt's farewell, in consultation with the family, but left my place to someone else, who was even closer. Until recently, I could never have suspected that I would have to make such choices.

I notice it in Oss also on the street and in the supermarket. The people are quiet. Everyone keeps the requested distance from each other, but people look at each other for a moment and give a little nod. A nod of empathy. A nod of understanding. A nod of 'we do this together'. It's beautiful, but it also gives a very unheimical feeling. What did we end up in?

I'm also very worried about how things are going in our nursing homes. From my time at the union — I did the negotiations for the elderly care collective agreement there — I still have a lot of contact with people working in home care and in the nursing home. I hear a lot of sad and disturbing stories and examples. Many people get infected, far from everyone is tested. Many people die, far from everyone is tested.

People are very worried about the lack of protective materials. Too many people still have to do their job without protective materials. They are not only at risk, but also at risk for the elderly who are vulnerable. Suppose they are infected, do not really have complaints themselves, but go from one older person to another? This way, they can infect many older, vulnerable people.

In addition, work in nursing homes is now extremely heavy. Family and caregivers are no longer allowed in, so everything comes to the, especially female, caregivers. They run double shifts. And what they're going through in those services are things they've never seen in this way. Seriously ill people. Very anxious people. Dying people.

Yesterday I heard about how a nursing home resident in the arms of a 21 year old caregiver, just started working in care, had died. That chops in really hard. She was upset, but her work goes on, she has to go on. Quite rightly, in the media and in politics, a lot of attention is paid to hospitals, to the people in the Intensive Care. Because what's happening there is awful. All I hear is so many stories from nursing homes right now, where many coronapatics are lying and dying, I wonder if that's enough in the picture. A significant part of these sick residents never end up in the hospital or in the intensive care unit. The employees there are currently struggling. Those who die there, before or after death, are not always tested for corona, and in reality the number of deaths is much higher than the figures we hear every day.

My neighbor works in the nursing home with me in the neighborhood. She had to do her job with only gloves and alcohol as protection. She got sick, tested in hospital Bernhoven and turned out to have the coronavirus. Now she's at home in quarantine. In the nursing home, several residents are infected and have also been tested positively. A number of residents also have the complaints but are not tested and therefore it is not possible to determine whether they are infected. And my neighbor, of course, is not the only one.

It's really incredible that our healthcare providers, who are now leading the fight to defeat the coronavirus, have to do this too often with insufficient protection. It becomes painfully clear how stupid it is to move the production of these types of protection materials to low-pay countries, on which we now depend. It is crazy for words that we have jet fighters ready in case we ever end up in a war, but we don't have any protective equipment or ability to produce them ourselves in case we go to war with a virus.

Of course I understand that saving lives is far more important than keeping statistics, but I fear that the scale of this disaster is even greater than we suspect at the moment because many infections, but also many deaths, are not 'counted' in Brabant at the moment.. In addition, I am very worried about our caregivers, about all caregivers, but certainly also about the caregivers in home care and nursing home care. They are faced with corona infestations and deaths to the full extent, but appear little in media and statistics. Every day, the extreme of these caregivers is asked under infernal circumstances.

Next week there will be another debate in the House of Representatives on corona and we will ask for more clarity on the mortality rates and on the situation in our nursing homes. We must do everything we can to support our caregivers at this time. In addition, there really need to be more possibilities for testing, at least for our healthcare providers.

For the rest of our country, I really hope that everyone will follow the guidelines of the RIVM, so that this infernal misery that I see now in Brabant can be saved as much as possible for the rest of the country..
Sincerely,
Lilian Marijnissen
Chairman of the Group of the European Parliament

This letter I received today