Belgium to speed up vaccinations starting next week

Belgium’s vaccination task force plans to step up the campaign to vaccinate the country’s population by next week.

According to Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke, ministers from Belgium’s three regions will meet on Wednesday and Thursday to come up with a strategy to accelerate vaccinations, which officially began yesterday.

The task force is expected to present the results of the meeting to the House Committee on Health this Friday.

Belgium’s vaccination program

About 700 residents of seven nursing homes across the country received the vaccine during the symbolic start of the vaccination drive on December 28.

Phase 1A of the campaign was formally launched on January 5. The goal is to vaccinate residents and staff members of nursing homes by the end of February, and hospital workers by the end of March.

For this week alone, the vaccine will be administered in 169 nursing homes: 73 in the French-speaking region of Wallonia, 54 in the Brussels-Capital Region, and 42 in the Flemish region of Flanders.

In phase 1B scheduled for April until June, priority will be given to people over 65 years old and those with high-risk medical conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes.

If all goes according to plan, other members of the population can start receiving the vaccine sometime in July. But it all depends on the supply.

At the moment, Belgium is using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.