A million adults over 60 need a Covid booster jab appointment; 9.2 million adults left to go

One million people over 60 have yet to scheduel an appointment for a booster shot, said Mariska van Blankers, vaccinations program director for the RIVM. She indicated that 780,000 booster shots were administered last week, exceeding the target by 80,000. Over 9 million people will be eligible to get a booster jab through the end of January, she said.

The Cabinet wants as many people over 60 as possible to get a booster shot before the end of this year. Those in the over-60 population who have not yet made an appointment are being asked to urgently do so.

It is not entirely clear how many people in this group can actually get a jab. A little over a million adults of all ages are not yet eligible for a booster shot, because they are required to wait at least three months after a previous vaccination or a recovery from an infection. About 500,000 of them were jabbed too recently, while 600,000 were infected with the virus since mid-October, or have had close contact with someone who was infected in the last few days.

"And in addition, there are about 320,000 people over 60 who have an appointment in January," Van Blankers said during a briefing about the vaccination campaign in the Tweede Kamer. "We think that's too late." The GGD will try to "bring forward" these appointments as much as possible. People will then receive a text message asking if they want to get their shot earlier.

Of the 4.3 million people over 60 in the Netherlands, about 1.4 million have already been given a booster. Roughly 1.7 million have an appointment for their booster jab.

Including the 780,000 shots administered last week, more than 1.8 million booster shots have been given since the campaign started in late November, Van Blankers stated. Health Minister Hugo de Jonge had set a target of 700,000 for that week, one million for this week, and 1.5 million for the week after Christmas. De Jonge said that any adult who wishes to get a booster shot should have the opportunity to do so by the end of January.

The figures that Van Blankers presented in the Tweede Kamer relate to the period up to and including Sunday, December 19. At the moment, everyone born in 1964 or earlier can make an appointment for a booster jab.

A total of about 12.1 million adults in the Netherlands were fully vaccinated against Covid-19, and can eventually receive a booster shot. That includes those who were vaccinated too recently or who recovered from an infection within the last three months.

That is why Van Blankers estimates that a total of approximately 11 million people should receive a booster jab in the coming six weeks. This means that with a turnout of 100 percent, almost 9.2 million people still need to receive a booster vaccination before the end of January.