After one week into Flander’s autumn vaccination campaign against COVID-19, around 400,000 people have already received their autumn booster dose, and more than half of the adult population has already received an invitation.
As per the figures published by Flemish Health Minster Hilde Crevits, “So far, over two in three over-65s have already been vaccinated or made an appointment, just like two in three of those with weakened immunity. Nearly 800,000 more doses will be administered before the end of October.”
Crevits said during a press address, “The vaccination centres with the many employees and volunteers have now been back to work for a week. After one week, the response rate is good. That way, we can fully protect people against a potential autumn wave in the coming weeks.”
Altogether, around 4.5 million people will have the chance to be vaccinated before the starting of November, she said, pointing out that the vaccines used in the campaign are the recently-approved ones adapted to the Omicron strain of the virus.
Belgium’s health ministers agreed that, whenever new vaccines are approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the authorities will always switch to the newest ones as soon as possible.
“That switch to the latest vaccines has happened,” Crevits said. “This week, the even newer vaccines adapted to the BA.4 and BA.5 variants also received approval from EMA. These can be delivered from the beginning of October. From then on, we will switch to those vaccines.”
