More vaccination sites to offer booster shots without appointments next week

Starting next week, people can go to more places in the Netherlands to get a Covid-19 booster shot without an appointment. Health service GGD will announce the locations later. "The vaccination capacity and the injection speed have recently increased so quickly at almost all locations that places are now becoming available," reported umbrella organization GGD GHOR Nederland.

In Leeuwarden, Drachten, and Venray, people can already walk in without an appointment and leave the building boosted. Several thousand people have already used this opportunity. This will also be possible in Maastricht from Saturday. If you come to the free walk-in and already had an appointment elsewhere, you must cancel it. When getting the booster shot, you can say you already had an appointment, and the GGD will remove it from the systems.

About 1.5 million people received a booster shot last week. This week that may rise to about 1.7 million. That could be an absolute record for the Netherlands. It is unknown how many shots the GGDs could administer if the capacity were fully used. 

About 11.9 million adults in the Netherlands are fully vaccinated. About 4.5 million of them have now had a booster shot, and 131,000 have had an additional shot. About 1.1 million people are not yet eligible because they have recently had the coronavirus, and several hundred thousand people have had their last coronavirus jab too recently. They have to wait a while longer. That means there are about 6 million people left to vaccinate. 

It is unknown how many people have made a booster shot appointment for the rest of the month and how high the turnout will ultimately be. Caretaker coronavirus minister Hugo de Jonge said earlier this week that not enough people have gone to get the extra shot.