Vaccination waiting lists because people are ignoring priority order: report

Healthcare personnel who do not work on the frontline of Covid-19 care, and therefore do not have priority for vaccination, have already been vaccinated. As a result, many nursing home staff are now on waiting lists, Nieuwsuur reported after speaking with multiple healthcare institutions.

The Dutch government's vaccination plan is to first vaccinate frontline workers in Covid-19 care in hospitals and ambulance services, then the staff of nursing homes, then the employees in disabled care, and then the employees in district nursing. Only once all these care workers have been vaccinated, people with other health issues and the elderly will get their turn. And after them, healthy Dutch adults. 

Hospitals started vaccinating their staff last week. About 30 thousand vaccines are available for frontline workers. But Nieuwsuur spoke to multiple healthcare institutions where office staff and restaurant staff, for example, have already been vaccinated.

"We are very concerned,' Andrea Retsma of SPOT, the association for small-scale home care organizations, said to the program. "The impact of this is huge. The staff in nursing homes is already under pressure and if there is any uncertainty again, that is not good."

Boris van der Ham, chairman of the Dutch Disability Care Association, told Nieuwsuur that staff in this department are struggling to get an appointment to be vaccinated. "And that while it is also important for us to build a ring of protection around this vulnerable group."

This will also lead to delays in vaccinating the elderly, according to the Health Council, which advised the government multiple times to vaccinate the elderly first. "We are in a complex situation of scarcity. But every vaccine you give to someone else is not available to the elderly," Health Council president Bart-Jan Kullberg said to the program.

"We cannot quantify this," municipal health service GGD, which is one of the main channels to get vaccinated, said about healthcare institutions letting their workers skip the line of priority. "It is understandable from their responsibility towards their employees, but the order is there to protect the most vulnerable. Employers are responsible for the invitations and for checking them."