‘We need to know every day how many vaccinated people end up in hospital. This gives us insight into the effectiveness of the vaccines against new variants and the speed of the pandemic’, says Flemish Minister of Welfare Wouter Beke. ‘The infection figures are no longer the right thermometer for the pandemic.’
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In his desk hang portraits of Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy. All by Wouter Beke (CD&V). During the second lockdown, the Flemish Minister of Welfare started painting, following his party colleague Mark Eyskens. To change his mind, after the nights he had been awake from the outbreak of the corona pandemic, which hit the Flemish rest homes hard.
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The time of sleepless nights is over, now that the Flemish vaccination campaign is bearing fruit. More than 90 percent of adult Flemings have been vaccinated, so that social life opened almost completely on 1 September. As long as the vaccines remain equally effective, this will not change anytime soon, according to Beke. ‘If only the infection figures rise, we don’t have to tighten up immediately. The infection figures are no longer the right thermometer for the pandemic.’
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How should we follow the evolution of the virus?
Wouter Beke: ‘Thanks to the vaccination campaign, we have built a dike against the virus. People do get infected, but get sick much less. The question now is: will the vaccinations in the coming period be resistant to possible new variants? And most importantly, will they keep us out of the hospital?’
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‘This requires a more accurate measurement method than the number of infections. We need to know every day how many vaccinated people end up in hospital. This gives us insight into the effectiveness of the vaccines against new variants and the speed of the pandemic. I have asked my colleague Frank Vandenbroucke (Vooruit) to pay more attention to the number of vaccinees in hospitals in decision-making. I also requested that Sciensano publish those figures weekly. This way we can see whether there are any cracks in our dike.’
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What if hospitals start filling up again this fall?
Peace: ‘The carrying capacity of the hospitals remains important, of course. But it is expected that, as is already the case, most of the admissions are unvaccinated people. That would mainly indicate that the vaccines are working. We have a limited number of breakthrough infections (people who still get infected despite vaccination, ed.) known in residential care centers. If this leads to a mild course of the disease but not to hospitalization, then that is no reason to suddenly become stricter. We should only tighten up if the number of vaccinated people in hospitals rises considerably, or the number of free beds falls considerably.’
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We should only tighten up if the number of vaccinated people in hospitals rises significantly, or the number of free beds falls significantly.