Pfizer to boost Covid vaccine deliveries to Netherlands within 2 weeks

Pfizer/BioNTech will increase its Covid-19 vaccine deliveries to the Netherlands by sending between 144,000 and 230,000 extra doses to the Netherlands every week starting at the end of April. The increase is in addition to the weekly delivery of a half-million doses already planned, and should scale up towards a million doses weekly, NOS reported.

This means that in the week beginning April 26, nearly 700,000 doses of the vaccine will be delivered, a 40 percent increase over the pre-arranged amount. By the week of May 31, a million doses will be delivered every week.

Earlier this week, the European Commission announced that 50 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will be delivered to all European Union member states starting from the end of June. The broadcaster said this was the second time that the Netherlands managed to skip the line and receive extra vaccines sooner than other EU countries.

In a letter to Parliament, Health Minister Hugo de Jonge previously announced that the Netherlands would receive a total of 272 thousand extra doses in the months of May and June. Those were to be an advance delivery of vaccines initially scheduled to arrive later in the year.

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine requires two doses separated by between three and six weeks. In total, the Netherlands had ordered over 23.5 million doses to be delivered through the end of 2021, including options exercised to buy up any doses previously rejected by other EU countries.