A booster shot against corona for teenagers yields nothing. The Health Council advised the cabinet on this on Friday. Not that the vaccine is so harmful, but an infection with the Omikron variant of the virus is even less dangerous for young people aged 12 to 17. And then the motto is: don’t prick.
Once again, the Netherlands is out of step with other European countries such as Belgium and Germany that already give teenagers who want to, a booster shot against the corona virus. Those countries do not do it to protect the teenagers themselves against the virus, but to make them a little less contagious as a group to others. Because the infections are high everywhere at the moment, so many people have to quarantine at home while they actually have to work. After each vaccination, the risk of infection and disease decreases.
The Netherlands has often proved headstrong and sometimes very slow during the corona crisis. Where other countries rushed to vaccinate and boost, the Netherlands took it ‘carefully’ but above all slowly. Where other countries ignore vaccine doubters, for example, the Netherlands still takes them quite seriously. Do not polarize or exclude, as many politicians argue. 15 percent of the Dutch do not want to be vaccinated against corona and an even larger group has fundamental objections to the corona pass for catering, theatres, football stadiums and museums. A petition from CDA member Mona Keijzer, former State Secretary for Economic Affairs, to abolish that access pass was signed by 640,000 people within four days. That’s a lot for a petition.
But if you just want to go on a family vacation or school trip to a country where boosting is mandatory, you now have a practical problem. Because the teenager is not entitled to a booster if the cabinet adopts the advice of the Health Council. A better idea is that Minister Ernst Kuipers (Public Health, D66) does allow the booster for teenagers. Incidentally, the corona pass is still valid in the Netherlands for teenagers who have been vaccinated twice or who have been cured of corona.
Another problem is that the corona access pass is also suddenly no longer valid in the Netherlands for about 500,000 adults because their two previous vaccinations are no longer effective enough. They have waived a booster shot and have not become ill and cured of Covid-19. Like the unvaccinated, they must now be able to show a recent negative test every time they want to go somewhere where a corona access pass is required. Or take a booster.
The cafes are full again since the latest relaxation. Many people clearly have no problem using a corona access pass. Still, skepticism seems to be growing. This is apparent from the many signatures for Keijzer’s petition and the 150 parliamentary questions that were put to Minister Kuipers about the pass. He wrote to the House of Representatives on Monday, in response to those questions, that the cabinet considers the use of the pass “still necessary in this phase of the pandemic”.
Research by TU Delft has shown that the pass barely works, because vaccinated people can also pass on the virus. But according to Kuipers, the corona pass means that there are 15 percent fewer infections than if it was abolished.
It remains a meager basis for a mandatory pass that so many people dislike. At the same time, it is now the pass that gives teenagers the freedom to travel.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 8, 2022
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