People celebrate King's Day on a boat in Haarlem, the Netherlands, April 27, 2020. (Photo by Sylvia Lederer/Xinhua)
THE HAGUE, April 27 (Xinhua) -- On King's Day, when everyone normally goes outside to celebrate wearing orange, the national color, the streets in the Netherlands were unusually quiet on Monday.
King's Day (Koningsdag in Dutch) is a national holiday in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, celebrated on April 27, the King's birthday. Normally, King Willem-Alexander visits a city with his family and the rest of the country celebrates with all kinds of festivities and a nationwide free market.
Due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, this time it was all different. The citizens sang the national anthem, the Wilhelmus, at home and watched the king's speech on TV. The king's planned visit to Maastricht was canceled.
The king's wife, Queen Maxima, and their three daughters then opened a digital free market. Instead of walking around the free market, one could upload photos of items for sale. Later in the day, Dutch citizens mainly played games at home, with neighbors on the street or in the garden. The official King's Day program concluded at 4 p.m. local time with a national toast to the 53-year-old king.
Not all people could resist the call by the Dutch government to stay at home as much as possible and to keep a 1.5-meter distance. The areas around Amsterdam's river Amstel were busy, and the police had to intervene during too crowded parties in the northern city of Groningen and in the municipality of Hoeksche Waard in the province of South Holland.
The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) announced its daily COVID-19 update. The death toll since Sunday was 43, which brought the total number of reported deaths to 4,518. This was the lowest daily death toll since 34 patients were reported dead on March 23.
The number of persons who tested positive for the virus grew by 400 to 38,245, while the number of those who are or were admitted to hospital rose by 65 to 10,521. Enditem
