Around 45,000 people in Brussels will be vaccinated against Covid-19 in the first three months of 2021, Brussels Health Minister Alain Maron told Bel RTL.
Brussels will start vaccinating in early January, after a vaccine is approved by the European Medicines Agency, as “we want to be assured that it’s safe, that it’s reliable,” Maron said.
As Belgium’s public health ministers said when revealing the country’s vaccination strategy, nursing home residents will be the first to be vaccinated, in the nursing homes themselves. The second group of people to receive the vaccine will be hospital staff and front-line health workers.
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For health workers that are not on the frontline, three of Brussels Capital Region’s seven coronavirus testing centres will be converted into partial vaccination centres, Maron explained. Brussels Mayor Philippe Close has also put forward the Heysel expo site as a potential location for both storing and administering coronavirus vaccines.
For the rest of the population, no decision has yet been made as to how or where they will be vaccinated, Maron said.
With 77,970 confirmed cases, the Brussels Region accounts for 13% of all 597,643 coronavirus infections in Belgium, with an average of 166 new cases per day over the last week, according to the latest figures by the Sciensano public health institute.
Jason Spinks
The Brussels Times
