Our vaccination campaign has the wind in its sails. More than 1.8 million Belgians have already received at least one shot and more than 621,000 have been fully vaccinated. Last week, for the first time, more than 100,000 doses of vaccine were administered in one day. This happened on both Thursday and Friday, with 108,788 and 114,642 registered vaccinations, according to the latest figures.
And over the next few weeks, things are going faster and faster. In Flanders alone, 358,000 vaccinations are planned this week, 42 percent more than last week. Then there were 253,000. The week after the Easter holiday, this goes down to an expected 228,000 vaccinations, but after that “we are going to see a rising movement”, said Dirk Dewolf, CEO of the agency for Health and care, at a press briefing last Friday.
The delivery schedules are therefore favourable. Belgium will receive 385,530 new vaccines this week and this should increase to 625,000 doses per week in the coming weeks. Pfizer alone promises to deliver more than 560,000 vaccines per week from the end of May, and the company has been very reliable in those projections so far. This includes Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
But already Belgium is one of the best countries in Europe when it comes to the speed of vaccination. Our country is in tenth place when you look at the number of doses administered per 100 inhabitants. We even go up to seventh place if you look at the percentage of people who have already received at least one shot. Only the percentage of fully vaccinated inhabitants is slightly behind us. We’re only in 20th place there.
However, the figures need to be commented on. Not every country reports equally well. As a result, they can sometimes be one or two days behind.
