All vaccination centers in West Flanders are closed for at least a few days during the Christmas holidays. But it is impossible to say when the 20 vaccination centers will do so. “This is inevitable,” says the Health and Welfare Agency. “It all depends on the local situation and the available staff.”
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Our editors conducted a survey this week in West Flemish vaccination centres. This indicates that each position will be closed at different times in the coming weeks. For example, Vaxpo in Kortrijk is closed between Christmas and New Year’s, while in Ypres the prick doesn’t start again until January 5th. Roeselare is closed for about six days on Christmas and New Year’s Day, but vaccinations will take place December 27-30. “We are vaccinating until December 23 and reopening our doors at full capacity from January 4,” says Mathijs Domari of the Vaccination Center in Bruges. “But changes are afoot. Now that the intervals between the second hit and the booster layer have been shortened, we will switch and adjust more quickly. Over the Christmas holidays, we only vaccinate on December 29, which is medically real. At the same time, we want to We’re giving our volunteers, who have committed for a year now, a break. Some indicate they’re done. So it’s also about respecting the volunteers in the care.” Local autonomy “The vaccination centers have local autonomy,” says Joris Munins, a spokesperson for the Health and Welfare Agency. “Only they can judge the number of staff they have available and how far they are in the vaccination campaign, and it is impossible to control centrally from our agency. So it is inevitable that there will be differences between centers. Thus, the number of days people spend is completely determined by local estimates.” The closure of vaccination centers is hard to reconcile with Flemish Social Welfare Minister Wouter Beke’s plan to give 2.5 million Flemish people a booster dose this year. “We’re on our way to achieving that goal,” says Joris Munins. “We can look not only at the week between Christmas and New Years, but at the vaccination campaign as a whole. The people in the vaccination centers have been working hard in recent weeks, and as a result more than a million booster shots have been given in the meantime. Many more are also planned. Appointments for this week and next week.
