In Belgium, faced with the increase in contamination, the government has asked museums to close their doors in Brussels until November 19.
Restrictions are also announced in cascade in Flanders and Wallonia, while the country has become the one where the coronavirus circulates most intensely during the second wave.
Read also: Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Spain ... The second wave of Covid puts cultural activities at a standstill
An official from BOZAR, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, told
Artnet News
that the museum, which had already closed its doors from March to May, had anticipated this new closure.
“
We had prepared several scenarios, and as we saw the number of cases increase, closure became one of those scenarios,
” she explains.
Read also: Coronavirus: Belgium tries to reconcile a "minimum" of cultural activities and health security
The institution will relaunch its BOZAR @ HOME online program, launched during the spring containment.
“
Of course we would have preferred to avoid this new closure, but we fully understand it
,” she explains.
Cinemas close without waiting for confinement
On Tuesday evening, Flanders also announced the closure, from Friday, of cultural places, and therefore of cinemas.
In principle, cinemas could remain open in Wallonia, but according to
La Libre
, most cinemas in the country will close their doors on Wednesday evening.
In a press release, the Federation of Belgian Cinemas explains that it anticipates closures which were in any case doomed to apply sooner or later to the whole country.
"
The sector has not yet had time to recover from the first period of confinement, this new closure is a hard blow for us
", laments Thierry Laermans, secretary of this federation, quoted by
La Libre
.
Theaters and operas draw the curtain in Wallonia
On Monday October 26, the city of Liège, in Wallonia, also announced the closure “
until further notice
” of its theaters and opera houses.
This concerns the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Forum, the Liège Theater and the Royal Opera of Wallonia-Liège.
From October 29 to November 10, the latter should have hosted performances of
Hamlet
, the opera by Ambroise Thomas.
All are therefore canceled.
Still in Liège, "
indoor cultural activities - shows, theaters, cultural performances - are limited to 40 people, and up to 200 people by exemption depending on the size of the room
".
Belgium had almost as many hospital patients on Wednesday as at the peak of the first in early spring, according to official figures.
The country recorded 689 new hospital admissions on Tuesday, breaking the all-time high set on March 28 (629).
There were a total of 5,554 patients in hospitals, very close to the peak recorded on April 6 (5,759), according to data from Sciensano, the Institute of Public Health.
