VOICE OVER: For over a hundred years...
RIVM has beenfighting infectious diseases.
Many experts are joining forces...
to get the novel coronavirus under control.
This isn't the first time.
This virus is preceded by a long history of epidemics and pandemics.
RIVM assisted local authorities in the fight against the Spanish flu.
The death toll from that disease was between 40 and 50 million worldwide.
It was the great pandemic of the last century.
In 1965, at its own Central Smallpox Vaccine Laboratory...
RIVM produced 5 million vaccine doses, enough to supply many countries...
with vaccines and save countless lives.
In 1969, RIVM was designated an international reference laboratory...
for the smallpox vaccine.
Ten years later, the laboratory had made itself obsolete.
Smallpox had been eradicated worldwide.
In 1981, the smallpox virus samples were transferred...
from the RIVM laboratory...
to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia (USA).
The CDC preserves samples of the smallpox virus from all around the world.
ROEL COUTINHO: One thing we all know for certain is...
that there will definitely be a novel influenza virus.
A pandemic involving a new flu virus.
We just don't know when.
VOICE OVER: On Queen's Day in 2009...
a three-year-old child who had been in Mexico...
turned out to be infected with the new virus.
She was the first patient in the Netherlands with the H1N1 virus from Mexico.
Over one month later, the World Health Organization...
declared that the outbreak of this new flu virus was a pandemic.
Roel Coutinho and other experts from RIVM and elsewhere...
advised the Dutch national government.
Back then, too, the experts of that Outbreak Management Team worked...
around the clock to fight the disease.
Later that year, the Netherlands bought...
large supplies of the H1N1 vaccine, which had since become available.
RIVM coordinated the vaccination of pregnant women...
healthcare workers and the target groups for the ordinary flu vaccine.
In hindsight, the impact of the virus was less severe than feared.
To this day, it remains one of the flu variants that flares up every year during flu season.
As the face of RIVM's Centre for Infectious Disease Control...
Jaap van Dissel is often in the media...
explaining recommendations and answering questions.
JAAP VAN DISSEL: And what I'd like to do over the next few minutes...
is walk you through some research studies that we discussed in the OMT.
A number of them published by RIVM.
To show you what the decisions are based on.
VOICE OVER: RIVM also utilises other expertise.
Like knowledge about human behaviour...
and well-being in relation to the corona measures...
and the quality of our living environment.
What, for example, will ensure that we can keep maintaining these measures?
We don't really know where this pandemic is going to go from here.
Whatever the case, COVID-19 is having a huge impact on everyone.
The people at RIVM are dedicated to do everything that must be done...
...to fight pandemics.
Now...
a hundred years ago...
and in the future.