GGD needs thousand additional staffers to meet Covid-19 vaccination goals

The GGD is looking for at least six thousand more healthcare professionals to help with the vaccination program against Covid-19 in June. Thousands of healthcare workers are needed to administer injections and an additional thousand are required to monitor the procedure.

In total, the GGD annouced they are looking for 13 thousand new full-time employees to help with coronavirus vaccinations. Seven thousand of these positions have already been filled.

The GGD has expanded their search not only to primary physicians but to anyone with a BIG registration. “We are actually calling on everyone with a BIG registration who wants to and has the time to register, such as retired general practitioners”, GGD spokesperson, Laetitia Gruwel said to NOS.

Next week, the GGD will begin an online recruitment campaign for medical supervisors. The health care department expects the required professionals to be found in time, however, the search will still likely prove to be a race against time.

By the end of June, Health Minister Hugo de Jonge is hoping to bring the country’s Covid-19 vaccination capacity to 2.5 million jabs per week.

As of Friday, the number of total vaccinations climbed to 6,101,271. This calendar week the GGD expects to administer 815,056.

On Thursday, 60 hospitals in the Netherlands announced they will help with administering vaccines by the end of May. The hospitals will primarily focus on vaccinating “young, healthy” people.

Nonetheless, the GGD remains the top player in the vaccination campaign. “The GGD plays the most important role in the campaign. Hospitals are ready to add half a million per week on top of that but only if more doses are delivered than expected”, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Health said.

Since the end of April, Pfizer/BioNTech has increased their vaccine doses sent to the Netherlands from 144 thousand to 230 thousand every week. The end goal is to deliver one million vaccine doses every week.