The United States, Germany, Spain: they all have high hopes that they will be able to vaccinate the first people against the corona virus in December. Netherlands manage that?
Dec. 11, it may be possible to vaccinate the first Americans, Moncef Slaoui, head of the US vaccination program, told CNN this weekend. The German Health Minister also sees “reasons to be optimistic” that the EMA, the European Medicines Agency, will approve the first vaccine this year. “And then we can start right away,” added Spahn.
Because as soon as the EMA gives the green light, the trucks will start running from Puurs in Belgium, where the European vaccine factory of pharmaceutical company Pfizer is located. Production has already started there, stock is available. How much exactly a Pfizer spokesperson cannot say, but it involves millions of doses. The Netherlands is entitled to 3.89 percent of that.
Not likely
Still, says Jaap van Delden, Covid19 vaccination program director at RIVM, it is “not super likely” that the first vaccines will be introduced in the Netherlands in 2020. As soon as the vaccine has arrived at a secret location in the Netherlands, RIVM carries out another – relatively unknown – test in its laboratories: that of quality control. RIVM employees randomly examine whether the vaccine batches contain the ingredients that the pharmaceutical company has promised and whether they are not contaminated.
In addition, a slightly slowing factor is that the Netherlands has decided to first vaccinate the oldest and most vulnerable inhabitants. Van Delden: “For each vaccine, the RIVM and the Health Council give advice for which target group it can best be used. A top athlete of 18 can react differently than a heart patient of 85. It may well be that a vaccine is equally suitable for all target groups, then we do the extra work for Piet Snot, but we do not want to have to say afterwards: if we had better looked at the side effects. ‘
Addendum
Only when this “addendum to the instructions for use” is ready, the vaccines can go to the nursing homes to put the first injections in arms. The plans for distribution, the schedules for the staff, the calls for the elderly, are then perfected at the same time.
With a blow to the arm, says Van Delden, it all takes about two weeks. So yes, if everything goes quickly, and if the EMA reaches approval before mid-December, vaccination in December is “not impossible”. “Although we have to be careful that there is a kind of competition feeling between countries who will vaccinate first. I understand that everyone thinks: the faster the better. But there is a turning point where faster is not necessarily better. We have to find a good balance in that. “
