The queue at the Schuttersveld sports hall in Crooswijk in Rotterdam is long on Wednesday afternoon. People over eighty shuffle in with their supervisors and walkers for their booster shot. The crowds give the impression that corona minister Hugo de Jonge is right when he says that the Dutch booster campaign is “getting up to speed”. Yet the queue gives a distorted picture, says Jeroen Alberts, location manager of the GGD. “The location has only been open for ten minutes and older people always arrive well on time. Soon it will be a bit quieter.”
The Netherlands is at the bottom of the European lists when it comes to booster speed. The campaign only started in mid-November, some other countries as early as September. According to the RIVM, almost 200,000 people in the Netherlands have had a booster shot, more than 1 percent of the population. Belgium is 13% of the population and currently uses more than 400,000 boosters per week. In the United Kingdom, more than 17 million extra shots have been taken and a quarter of the population has been ‘boosted’.
The need is no less great in the Netherlands. For weeks, the number of daily infections has been around 20,000, hospitals are overcrowded and death rates in nursing homes are rising. Ernst Kuipers, chairman of the National Network Acute Care, said in the House of Representatives on Wednesday that rapid boosting “can quickly have a strong effect on the influx of hospital patients who have been vaccinated”. The availability of vaccines is not the problem: RIVM has at least six million vaccines in stock for all people over 60. This raises the question of why the Netherlands is not stinging much faster now to get through a new, heavy corona winter better.
The main problem is a lack of skewers. The GGDs have been struggling for some time to find sufficient staff in the current tight labor market. This week, GGD employees said NRC that the organization is in danger of becoming exhausted by the many tasks. At the moment, the organization must also do everything it can to further increase the test capacity. Now there is also the question of speeding up the booster campaign.
Most people at the GGD in Rotterdam get their booster shot.
Photo David van Dam
The shortage raises the question of whether the GGDs have started recruiting new nurses in time. The GGD GHOR Nederland, the national umbrella organization, does not want to answer questions about this or say how many skewers there are currently too few. In September, the Ministry of Health announced that the GGD would be “ready” for a booster campaign. The GGDs themselves did not expect that the boost would be necessary so quickly, according to a ‘road map’ that GGD GHOR made for the fourth quarter. In that document, published in mid-October, it still stated that the GGDs expected that ‘less vaccination capacity is needed’ for the rest of the year and that only preparations are now being made for ‘a possible booster campaign’.
At the GGD Rotterdam-Rijnmond they also thought they had more time. “Originally, we would not start boosting massively until January, but the ministry now accelerates that every week,” says vaccination manager Marco Slegt. His GGD is now doubling the number of vaccination workers from 500 to about 1,000. The number of booster locations will also be expanded from two to four this month. About a thousand boosters are now placed in the Schuttersveld sports hall, Slegt hopes to double this within a few weeks. “We carry out the order we receive and do it as well as possible.”
Minister De Jonge promised a “booster offensive” last Friday. To support the GGDs, the Ministry of Health has started an initiative to recruit extra skewers elsewhere. Discussions about this are still ongoing, but inquiries have shown that many parties that can puncture have not been approached or have not been asked for maximum commitment.
For example, the Ministry of Defense has 1,500 soldiers available, but the GGDs have not yet made a concrete request for help with the booster campaign. Four hundred soldiers will help the GGD with tests, but it is still unclear when soldiers will start taking the injections. The general practitioners, who previously participated in the vaccination campaign, were not asked by the ministry to boost massively. The National Association of General Practitioners (LHV) has been asked for support and is now approaching retired or individual GPs to see if they want to help the GGD.
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The main problem at the GGDs is a lack of sticks.
The association of medical students, The Medicine Student, has not yet been approached by the ministry. The association represents almost 16,000 medical students who could and would like to help, thinks chair Femke van de Zuidwind. “As an association, we are certainly open to mobilizing our supporters. I think many of the medical students want to do their part. This is also work that they can do very well.”
I think many of the medical students want to do their part
Femke of the South Wind president association of medical students
Many parties in the House of Representatives wondered on Wednesday why the ministry did not prepare for the booster campaign earlier and better. PVV spokesman Fleur Agema noted that the Netherlands “is behind the times again”, SP member Maarten Hijink made the comparison with the equally slow start of the vaccination campaign last year. “Once again, Minister De Jonge is the European behind it when it comes to vaccination.”
D66 MP Jan Paternotte came up with the proposal from January, when it is the turn of the under-60s, to open the booster vaccinations with a free walk-in without an appointment. Marco Slegt of the Rotterdam GGD warns that such a system may be less efficient than often thought. “Then it becomes chaos with huge numbers of people. And don’t forget that you have more administration to do on site if people come without an appointment and it takes longer on location.”
Seriously speed up
Minister De Jonge promised the House on Wednesday later this week to come up with a plan to seriously accelerate the booster campaign. His ministry expects that approximately 700,000 boosters will be put in place this week, because many healthcare personnel are also being pricked by other healthcare providers. In the coming weeks, the injection volume of the GGDs must be expanded to 700,000 per week. If that succeeds, “as large as possible” of the elderly and care workers should be boosted before the turn of the year.
De Jonge expressed no expectations about when all Dutch people could have had a booster. The GGD reported on Tuesday that this could be the case at the end of March. If the GGD’s planning becomes reality, the Dutch will be optimally protected in the spring instead of the winter.
In Crooswijk, 85-year-old Neeltje Sleeuwenhoek from Ridderkerk has had her booster. She is glad it was her turn, her second injection was already at the end of March. “It’s not going smoothly.” For her, the jab does not make much difference for now, she is at home a lot. That is also because the three bridge clubs she is in cannot meet due to the current evening lockdown. “If that is allowed again later, I will feel safer with that third shot.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of December 2, 2021
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