Vandenbroucke: “Vaccination pass like in France is perfectly defensible” | Coronavirus what you need to know

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“This is not a pandemic only of the unvaccinated,” said Minister Vandenbroucke at VTM NIEUWS. “It’s sad to say, but even if you’re vaccinated you can still get infected and, if your vaccination was a while ago, you could even end up back in the hospital. The reason why we call on people to get boosted is because that third shot greatly strengthens the protection.”

“Everyone should be vaccinated and everyone should be boosted,” continues the minister, who reiterates that he is in favor of compulsory vaccination.

“You should not bully anyone,” the minister responds to recent statements by the French president. Macron has come under fire in recent days for saying he wants to make life so difficult for unvaccinated people that they will still be vaccinated. The lower house of the French parliament approved the law for his ‘vaccination pass’ on Thursday morning. If the upper house also gives the green light, the vaccination pass will replace the corona pass in France from 15 January (pass sanitary, ed.), to which there is already a lot of opposition. A negative test certificate is then no longer sufficient to enter many places.

Vandenbroucke sees something in the stricter pass. “What has been voted into law in France, apart from Mr Macron’s statements, is not wrong,” he said. “They say there: if you want to participate in certain activities where you can infect other people or become infected yourself – for example going to a cafe – then you have to be vaccinated, period. I think that’s perfectly justifiable. That is a kind of vaccination obligation. And I think we need to have that debate.”

The minister also defended the decision of the Consultation Committee at VTM NIEUWS not to take additional measures despite the explosive increase in the number of infections in our country. “We did implement a number of stricter rules at the last Consultation Committee before Christmas,” he emphasizes. “And we stick to that,” says Vandenbroucke. “The intention now is to have some stability in terms of measures for a period of time.” According to the minister, it is important that everyone in the meantime also shows the necessary caution and strictly observes the precautions. “Let us telecommute to the maximum, go shopping with at most two, wear the mask,…”

The fact that the government has not made teleworking fully mandatory, as the experts had recommended, has to do with the fact that 100 percent working from home is very difficult for some people, according to the Vooruit leader. In addition, the current guideline, whereby there is a maximum of 1 return day per week, is well observed. “I would add: these are really the days when you should work from home as much as possible.”

The minister further emphasizes again that the new quarantine rules have not come into effect “because omikron is just an innocent animal”. “That’s really a misunderstanding,” he says.

“The reason we changed the quarantine rules is because the testing for all the people in quarantine is overloading our testing capacity. We now want to be able to use the PCR tests as much as possible for people who have symptoms and do not burden the GPs too much. On the other hand, if you find yourself in a situation where a lot of people have to go into quarantine… Then you get staff loss in hospitals and essential sectors threaten to be unable to work. So it’s actually to keep the companies and hospitals running that we adjust the quarantine rules. But just to be clear, if you’ve had high-risk contact with someone who’s infected, you need to be very careful. Don’t go to a restaurant, don’t go to a cafe, wear that mouth mask. Those rules are very important.”

According to Vandenbroucke, the fact that so much discussion arose after the previous Consultation Committee ensured that he started working on a step-by-step plan for the culture sector and sport, among other things. “Politics has not done well,” admits Vandenbroucke. “We were called back by the Council of State.”

“The mistakes that were made then were reason for me to say: ‘Now let’s hit the reset button as far as the method is concerned’. During the Christmas holidays I started working on a roadmap in which we ensure that future measures are a little better known in advance and a little more predictable, and also more balanced across the sectors – in such a way that not one sector feels that it is the bear the entire burden of the measures.”

Vandenbroucke hopes to have this step-by-step plan, the long-awaited corona barometer, approved at the next Consultation Committee.

Watch the full studio conversation with Minister Frank Vandenbroucke here: