The Dutch government announced its plans for the first steps in tackling the nitrogen deposition issue.

There is concern about the current approach to nitrogen and the proposed measures; these concerns have been expressed in Dutch society as a whole and amongst farmers in particular.

The annual influenza epidemic in the winter of 2018-2019 was less severe than the year before. Approximately 400,000 people have had the flu.

Approximately 79 percent of the nature reserves (Natura 2000 areas) in EU countries are estimated to be exposed to an excess of nitrogen deposition in 2020.

Influenza vaccination reduces the number of influenza virus infections but not the overall number of illness.

Researcher Dr Guus Velders of RIVM has made the Nature top-10 list of 2016. This means that, according to Nature, he was one of the 10 most influential scientists in 2016.

Scientific research by RIVM’s Guus Velders stood partly at the basis of the HFC global climate agreement.

Last winter season, the duration and severity of the influenza epidemic was moderate compared to previous years.

Without global agreement on the use of HFCs, their contribution to the greenhouse effect may increase sharply to 10 percent of that of CO2 by 2050. The current contribution is less than 1 percent.

The flu epidemic in the winter of 2014 / 2015 lasted 21 weeks and as such was the longest epidemic ever recorded in the Netherlands. Nearly two million people suffered from flu-like symptoms.