1 February 2021: The Vaccination Task Force reported good progress…

1 February 2021: In the week to 28 January on average 2,259 people tested positive each day. The figure is up 9% on the week. The number of hospitalizations and deaths from the virus continues to fall slightly. The Vaccination Task Force reported yesterday that good progress is being made with the vaccination program and that Belgium is among the group of countries at the head of the race when it comes to the percentage of people already vaccinated. The Task Force is still awaiting advice from Belgium’s High Council for Health on which groups can best be vaccinated using the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine. Some EU countries such as Germany and Italy have said that they won’t use the AstraZeneca vaccine to vaccinate older people as there is still too little test data for this group. They nevertheless confirmed that it is still the intention to start the final phase of the vaccination program (the vaccination of people under 65 with no underlying medical conditions) before the summer. They anticipate that in addition to AstraZeneca there will be large quantities of the Pfizer vaccines and probably the Janssen (Johnson&Johnson) vaccine from April. Let’s hope they are right. Today’s picture is a vignette of yesterday morning’s walk downtown Ghent – Ghent, Belgium.