Healthcare workers and people who run a higher risk of becoming seriously ill due to corona can again get a vaccination against the corona virus this fall. Minister Ernst Kuipers (Public Health, D66) writes this in a Wednesday letter to the House of Representatives. The decision follows an advice from the Health Council last week. In it, the cabinet was urged to set up a structural vaccination program against corona.
With the new corona shot, the cabinet hopes to bring the protection of people from high-risk groups up to standard and to keep the number of hospital admissions as low as possible. The same applies to healthcare workers with direct patient contact. Although fewer and fewer people are becoming seriously ill due to corona due to the broad-based protection provided by vaccinations, among other things, the virus will continue to circulate, the Ministry of Health predicts. Because protection diminishes over time, vaccinating people in high-risk groups remains a necessity.
According to the cabinet, there is still a lot of uncertainty about how the corona virus will develop in the long term. That is why the Health Council advises to check annually for whom the vaccination is necessary.