Jade and Inge

Everybody in our family is still having a difficult time coping with the new reality of not being able to move around much. Nienke, Inge and Ellis have their school work, but the teachers are still finding their way around teaching remotely. Nienke and Inge go to pony Jade every day. Here Inge is riding Jade. Photo taken by Nienke.

At UMCG, everyone tries to be prepared for the wave of COVID-19 patients that will inevitably arrive. I'm working from home and doing my best to handle the IT requests for the radiotherapy department. In the afternoon, I had to be in the hospital for a couple of hours, for a management team meeting. We used a huge meeting room with only a couple of people present, so we could spread across the room, again to minimise the chance of spreading the virus (even though none of us appear to be infected).

The amount of work to prepare is already huge in our department, but other departments whose main focus will be COVID-19 are even busier. Two new wards have been created and one of the intensive care departments that was closed due to a shortage of staff has been re-opened. Will it be enough? I'm still seeing lots of people not following the rules for social distancing. It makes me sad and mad at the same time. Come on people! We need this to flatten the curve so the hospitals can cope with the amount of patients!