Netherlands reaches 7 million Covid vaccinations; New daily record set Wednesday
The Netherlands managed to administer over a million Covid-19 vaccine shots in just eight days. The seven millionth dose was already given on Thursday, said Health Minister Hugo de Jonge late that afternoon.
The country needed eleven days to get from five to six million injections, and about two weeks for the previous million.
Public health agency RIVM estimated that 152,195 people were given a Covid-19 vaccine on Wednesday, breaking the single-day record set a day earlier. That brought the moving average up for the ninth straight day, reaching 127,775.
That average will still have to rise by eight percent in order to meet this week's target of about 963 thousand. That looked increasingly likely with the De Jonge's news of the new milestone.
"We are noticing the effect more and more," he said, sharing a video about a worksite in Doorn that specializes in bringing people with a visual impairment into the workforce. The site reopened just a few weeks ago as more of their clients have had access to a vaccination.
During a press conference this week, De Jonge pledged that a million people will get a vaccine shot next week, and well over a million will be vaccinated weekly starting in June. He said he still firmly believes that every adult resident of the Netherlands will have had access to a first vaccine shot by early July.
An estimated 6,875,100 vaccine doses were administered in the Netherlands through Wednesday night, according to a RIVM model. The agency is unable to provide exact figures on vaccination progress, with fewer than 80 percent of vaccination records submitted to the agency thus far.
