Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has called on the country to respect a night-time curfew, saying it was still needed to fight the pandemic despite a court ruling earlier that the measure lacked a legal basis.

Rutte maintained that the curfew was needed to prevent a surge of infections due to more contagious new mutations of the virus, and said he would do everything he could to keep it in place.

“It would be very unwise to lift the curfew at this moment,” Rutte told reporters. “We installed it in order to control the coronavirus as much as possible and to make it possible to regain our freedom in a safe way.”