Netherlands Announces Plan To Give People Up to Six Doses of COVID Vaccine
The health minister of The Netherlands, Hugo de Jonge, has indicated the country could be preparing another three booster shots, amounting to six doses of the COVID vaccines.
In a letter written by De Jonge to his country’s parliament Wednesday, he suggested that people of the Netherlands should consider additional rounds of booster vaccines to fight new variants.
Out of the three doses, two of them will be administered in 2022 and another shot in 2023.
The letter also confirmed enough availability of booster vaccines for Netherlands for its current booster campaign.
In the letter, De Jonge wrote: “Certainly because only half of a regular vaccine is needed for a booster dose of Moderna, we now have sufficient vaccines for the current booster campaign and there is ample basis for possible extra booster rounds in the second quarter and the autumn of 2022 and in 2023.”
The Netherlands has bought vaccine stock in bulk in order to avoid shortages.
The country already bought 12 million vaccine doses from Pfizer/Biontech and has ordered nearly 6 million additional vaccines to avoid shortages.
In addition to it, another agreement is in place with Pfizer/Biontech for at least another 17.5 million doses before 2023. The eligibility criteria for booster coronavirus vaccine shots in 2022 and 2023 is however unclear.
Pfizer/Biontech is working on a vaccine adapted to the current Omicron variant.
Pfizer/Biontech has indicated it needs the time span of at least 100 days to develop, approve and scale up production for a modified vaccine. Based on this timeline the delivery is expected in April at the earliest.
People born in 1983 and 1984 were invited by the Municipal Public Health Services on December 29 to get their booster shots, and those born between 1985 and 1986 were told they could schedule theirs the following day.
The current data on vaccine uptake in the country is updated on the Netherlands’ government website.
89% of people aged 18 or over had received at least one vaccine dose as of December 26 and a total of 85.9 percent are fully vaccinated.
Meanwhile, one of the most vaccinated nation Israel may switch to the policy of herd immunity to be achieved through mass infection as the vaccines have failed to curb the rising cases of COVID-19 Omicron variant.
Concerned Indians at the sametime have demanded that mass rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in India should be halted immediately. These experimental vaccines pose serious dangers. That is the message contained in a statement from concerned citizens soon to be forwarded to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
- Source : GreatGameIndia
