Following the closure of Café Van Rijn, the Bascafé and TweeKeerBellen pubs will now also close their doors due to a coronavirus outbreak. ‘I’m appealing to students to take responsibility for their actions,’ said Mayor Hubert Bruls at a press conference.

Following the closure of Café Van Rijn , the Bascafé and TweeKeerBellen pubs have also been forced to close their doors. The reason for the closure of all three pubs, which are popular among students, is a coronavirus outbreak. All of the infected cases – seventeen from the Bascafé pub and eleven from the TweeKeerBellen pub – were confirmed at the beginning of September.

The Bascafé and TweeKeerBellen pubs, which had previously received warnings (TweeKeerBellen was even forced to close their doors for several days, ed.), were closed down at 7.30 tonight and will remain closed for a maximum period of fourteen days.

Quarantine

‘These outbreaks gave the GGD enough reason to advise that both of the pubs be closed down due to the threat to public health,’ said Mayor Hubert Bruls at a hastily convened press conference in the council chamber of the town hall.

The mayor expects that even more cases will be confirmed in the coming days. ‘The GGD will continue to carry out source and contact tracing. Following the closure of Café Van Rijn, 170 people were forced to go into quarantine, but that number may now be higher.’

Bruls did not rule out the possibility that more pubs would have to close and also announced that police and special investigating officers (BOAs) would be carrying out additional checks. The mayor, who is also the chairman of the Safety Region, called the situation ‘serious’. ‘In my experience, this is the first time that three pubs in the same city have been forced to close down in the same week because of an outbreak.’

‘No coincidence’

Bruls suggested that it was no coincidence that all three pubs were geared towards students. ‘I’m appealing to students to take responsibility for their actions. You’re not just following the coronavirus measures for your own good. You may have fellow students or teachers who are informal caregivers.’ The municipality will now be focusing more on students in its communications.

All the same, the mayor does believe that Radboud University should not be blamed. ‘The orientation market in Goffertpark was well organised, as is the tuition, which includes the lectures in the Vereeniging. As of yet, no cases have been confirmed at either the university or HAN University of Applied Sciences.’

Extra vigilant

Earlier this week, the GGD Gelderland-Zuid announced that 170 students had been forced to go into quarantine following the coronavirus outbreak in Café Van Rijn. At least two study associations had infected members in their ranks as a result of the outbreak.

The GGD Gelderland-Zuid subsequently called on students to be extra vigilant, and to ensure that their name and telephone number were recorded when visiting the pub, even if these had not been explicitly requested. This would make it easier to identify infected cases if an outbreak occurred.