About 1.16 million Covid boosters administered last week

The pace of Covid-19 booster vaccinations is continuing to increase. About 1.16 million adults received a booster shot last week, nearly the same as the two previous weeks combined.

In total, almost 3 million people received a booster shot through Sunday. The RIVM has not yet disclosed a demographical breakdown per age group. The GGD health services administered about 1 million booster jabs last week, bringing the GGD total up to about 2.4 million. Initially, these were reserved for older people, and people with occupations that gave them priority access, such as nursing homes workers. Last week, more people in their forties and fifties were also vaccinated.

In addition, almost 625,000 people received a booster jab in an institution or hospital, about 140,000 more than the previous week. In the institutions this includes nursing home residents, people with Down syndrome, and others. Hospitals have been allowed to vaccinate doctors and nurses on staff, general practitioners and ambulance personnel.

About 130,000 people also received an extra vaccine dose as part of their original course of vaccination. These are not considered booster shots, and are given to people with a severe immune disorder that prevented them from building up protection against the coronavirus disease.

When the booster shots and the supplemental shots are added together, 3.12 million people received an extra shot. That amounts to about 20 percent of all adults.

Approximately 11.9 million adults in the Netherlands are considered to be fully vaccinated, regardless of their booster status. About 8.8 million people are still waiting for their booster shot. The Cabinet wants them all to have had the opportunity to get a booster jab before the end of January. In order to achieve the target, the booster rate must be increased to up to 1.8 million shots per week. People who tested positive for coronavirus in the past three months have to wait a little longer, as do those who received their initial vaccine shots within the past three months.

Only about 8,500 people were vaccinated for the first time in the past week, the lowest number ever. With the recent approval of the new Novavax vaccine, the government hopes to convince doubters to still be vaccinated. The vaccine is protein-based, whereas the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use mRNA technology, and the Janssen and AstraZeneca products are vector vaccines. The first deliveries from Novavax will arrive at the end of February or early March at the earliest.

More than 84 percent of all Dutch people aged 12 years and older are fully vaccinated against Covid-19.