Belgium’s national, regional and community health ministers are due to meet on Wednesday to discuss the COVID-19 vaccination strategy, according to Federal Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke.
The meeting is expected to consider opinions to be issued on Tuesday by the Conseil Superieur de la Sante (CSS – Higher Council of Health) on three questions from the Federal Health Minister.
“There are kinks in the system that need to be resolved, and we are working on it,” Vandenbroucke admitted on Sunday while being interviewed as a special guest on RTL-TVI news.
The questions referred to the Council include one on the possibility of administering the AstraZeneca vaccine against the novel Coronavirus to people above the age of 55 years. If the Council responds in the affirmative, that will change the entire vaccination campaign, the minister said in response to a query from VRT.
The second question is whether the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine can be administered 42 days after the first, instead of 21 days as has been recommended thus far.
The final question is whether administering a single dose would be enough instead of the two recommended for some vaccines. On this last point Vandenbroucke said the question was perhaps premature.
“I really want to reset the campaign,” he stressed, although he refrained from making any earth-shattering statements in that regard. “Would you have thought six months ago that so many Belgians would already have been vaccinated?” he added. “No.”
The Minister, who did not want to focus solely on vaccination, said he felt it was also possible to do more testing if the various testing methods that exist are taken into account.
“Perhaps we need to be simpler today and use the capacity we have to a maximum,” he said.
The Brussels Times
