Parliament annoyed by slower vaccine rollout plan, but rejects forced ramp up

During an emergency debate in Parliament on Tuesday, politicians in the opposition loudly criticized Health Minister Hugo de Jonge for the country's inability to start vaccinating the public against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus before January 8. Several MPs from parties within the governing coalition also joined the chorus of disapproval.

Originally, De Jonge said that he had expected to obtain the first batch of vaccine doses produces by Pfizer/BioNTech by the end of the year, with a plan to start inoculating the public on January 4. He pointed to production and distribution delays as being reasons for moving the start date closer to January 18, but then on Thursday issued a statement saying the vaccine rollout would actually begin on January 8.

The latter came after a scathing report which questioned why public health agency RIVM and municipal health service GGD did not have the IT systems and logistics in place to start a massive vaccination campaign if the country has known for months that a vaccine might be approved by the end of December. Countries bordering the Netherlands, like Germany, plan to begin administering the vaccine after Christmas, assuming the Pfizer product is approved for use in Europe next week.

Far right opposition party PVV expressed concern that the government was still ill-prepared to begin the process after months of discussions. "Why doesn't the GGD and the Minister have their affairs in order?" questioned PVV leader Geert Wilders. "The Netherlands is lagging behind again and it is not the first time that the minister has fumbled," he said, after pointing out that the IT systems were untested and call centers to schedule vaccination appointments were not established.

To that end, Wilders put forward his own proposal to force the country to begin its vaccination program in December. That proposal was shot down by the Members of Parliament out of fear that the GGD would not be ready in time and that the forced acceleration could cause more problems than it would solve.

Wilders joined leaders of the left-wing opposition in pointing out that De Jonge's ministry was slow to implement a far-reaching test policy to trace the spread of the infection, that there were shortfalls in source and contact investigations, and that the coronavirus app, CoronaMelder, was released much later than anticipated. Labour leader Lodewijk Asscher said that De Jonge was mistaken to say that "a week more or less does not matter."

Asscher also noted that nobody has called Germany careless for being ready to vaccinate its population before the end of the year, where De Jonge said he would rather be more cautious and careful instead of symbolically starting sooner. De Jonge was also criticized by GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver and Socialist party leader Lilian Marijnissen.

"This must not go wrong, she said."