Corona vaccinations will start next month, says prime minister
Belgium has signed contract with five producers of coronavirus vaccines and should be able to vaccinate health-care providers by next month
‘There is no time to lose’
Details of the vaccination plan still need to be finalised, but the first to receive the vaccine will be hospital staff, other health-care providers and nursing home workers and residents, De Croo announced. This group will be followed by the elderly, people with chronic or acute illnesses and people with essential job functions. “Essential” must still be determined but is likely to include police, politicians and perhaps teachers.
After that, vaccines will be rolled out to the rest of the population by age group. “There is no time to lose,” said De Croo. “We will be ready by 5 January to begin vaccinations. The vaccines must still be approved at the European level. But as soon as they are, we will be ready to start administering the vaccines as quickly as possible.”
Vaccinations will be provided free of charge. The vaccines are not required; people can choose to be vaccinated or not.
I’m afraid that we will probably be busy with vaccinations for the entire year
Belgium has signed contracts with five providers of coronavirus vaccines: AstraZeneca/Oxford, Johnson & Johnson, BioNTech/Pfizer, Curevac, and Moderna. All of the vaccines work according to the same basic principle: They train our immune systems to fight the virus using a harmless variant of the virus.
Vaccines from the first two developers mentioned above use an innocuous cold virus manipulated to resemble the coronavirus to achieve this; the other two use genetic material from the coronavirus itself.
Two of the vaccines – BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna – are 95% effective, meaning 95% of people getting the vaccine are protected from getting sick from Covid-19. This is an outstanding result for a virus vaccination. AstraZeneca/Oxford are 70% effective, an average result for a vaccination against a virus. The protection levels of the other two are unknown.
All the vaccines except for Johnson & Johnson require two jabs, the second following the first by one month. Citizens will not be able to choose which vaccine they receive. As of today, BioNTech/Pfizer is the only vaccine producer to have submitted a request for approval. The EMA is expected to approve it by the end of December.
How long it will take to get everyone vaccinated is not yet known. It depends, said federal public health minister Frank Vandenbroucke (SP.A), on when vaccines become available. “I’m afraid that we will probably be busy with vaccinations for the entire year, but I am not prepared to cite exact dates,” he told VRT.
Photo ©Philippe Pauchet/MAXPPP/BELGA
