The first corona vaccines are coming soon, but they probably won’t be enough for everyone right away. Choices have to be made. Priority is given to people over 60 and people with serious conditions, the Health Council now advises about this.
People over 60 and people with diseases such as heart or lung disease, diabetes or cancer are at the highest risk of serious symptoms with COVID, so they get the vaccine first according to the Health Council. Starting with the oldest groups among the over 60s and with the over 60s of a condition. If people with serious conditions cannot be vaccinated themselves, their caregivers and caregivers are vaccinated. The council makes this choice because these people need the most hospitalizations and doctor treatments for COVID. If they are protected, it gives them scope for care and that is now the most important.
Or the young people?
But circumstances can change. There are two other options that the government can also use. An alternative choice is, for example: vaccinate the spreaders first. In that case, the young people will probably be given priority. This is not the Health Council’s first choice. The reason is that too little is known whether this strategy really works. It sounds nice, but we don’t know yet, for example, how well the vaccines work against the contagiousness of the virus. Third possibility: first vaccinate the vital professions, such as people in care. According to the council, this would be the best strategy if social disruption is imminent. For example, if so many nurses are infected, the hospitals are not well staffed.
Suitable for the elderly
It is an advice, the cabinet ultimately decides what the policy will be. When the vaccines are available, the cabinet will decide how the distribution of corona vaccines will really work. This may well be a combination of the three strategies mentioned, according to the Health Council.
Because the Health Council had to look into a crystal ball for this advice. There are now eleven vaccines almost at the finish line, no one knows which ones will actually be approved. Large numbers of six vaccines have been reserved for the Netherlands. Some of these vaccines have been well researched in the elderly, in other words the target group that the Health Council now advises. But not all. ‘More clarity about the efficacy of the different vaccines in different target groups can lead to different considerations’, the Council concludes.
