<span style="color: #222222;">Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has announced Western Europe's first partial Covid lockdown of the winter, with three weeks of restrictions for shops, sport and catering.<br />''<br />''He said that the annoying, drastic move was in response to record infections and rising intensive care cases. Meanwhile, Police have fired water cannon against hundreds of protesters in The Hague.<br />''<br />''Last weekend too, thousands of protesters marched through The Hague in anger at existing Covid restrictions.<br />''<br />''Latest daily figures on Friday showed 16,287 new Covid cases, just short of Thursday's record but up a third on the previous week. Dutch vaccination rates are relatively high, with 82.4% of over-12s having two doses, that's 73% of the total population.<br />''<br />''Austria is also expected to back a lockdown for unvaccinated people this weekend. In Austria, vaccination coverage is at 65% and the country is expected to go for a national lockdown for the unvaccinated. Denmark, which had downgraded coronavirus as no longer a socially critical disease, has re-instated a Covid pass that was phased out in September.<br />''<br />''Much of Europe is facing a surge in cases, blamed partly on low vaccination in several countries.</span><br />