General practitioners Drenthe in distress to minister. ‘GGD declines help with boosting’

The Drentse Huisartsen Coöperatie calls on Minister Hugo de Jonge for help in a desperate letter to accelerate the boosting against corona.

The GGD Drenthe had to decline the help of general practitioners, home care workers and pharmacists on Wednesday due to national regulations. “Unreal and unacceptable,” the Drenthe general practitioners write in the letter. “Our most vulnerable patients are still not protected and our entire healthcare system is unnecessarily endangered.”

On Wednesday, people lined up at various injection locations in the Northern Netherlands in the hope of being able to get a boosterpik without an appointment. Tuesday it became clear that such a booster is necessary to protect against the advancing omikron variant. During the press conference, Minister De Jonge also promised that everyone over the age of eighteen can quickly receive a booster shot.

Phone overloaded and locations not ready yet

In practice, it is only extremely difficult to make agreements. The telephone lines were again overloaded so that many elderly people could not make an appointment. The GGDs in Groningen and Drenthe are busy expanding their locations and planning more injection appointments. But according to the Drenthe GPs, this is going much too slowly.

Both in Groningen and in Drenthe, general practitioners, assistants and other healthcare personnel have come forward who would like to help with the ‘pep shot’. But the GGDs partly declined help on Wednesday because they cannot book prick appointments faster due to the national appointment system of the GGD GHOR. The locations for large-scale boosting are not all ready yet.

GGDs Groningen and Drenthe are trying to speed up

The spokespersons of the GGD Drenthe and GGD Groningen said that they were happy with the offer, but that they had enough people available for the time being. Drenthe can scale up from 25,000 injections per week to 45,000. Groningen announced that it would soon provide clarity, but was unable to provide more information about the upscaling on Wednesday.

The Drenthe general practitioners hope that in villages and neighborhoods injections can be taken at many more locations, by general practitioners, pharmacists and their employees. They propose to do the registration first on paper so that it can be entered digitally later by the GGD.

“While millions of vaccines are available, we see that many vulnerable patients and people over the age of 60 do not get an appointment at the GGD for their booster vaccination in the short term,” the Drenthe GPs write. And then towards De Jonge: ,,It seems as if you equate an appointment with the jab and practice shows that there are sometimes weeks in between. We don’t have that time.”

They give some examples from their office hours:

,,Two 75+ patients have not yet received the invitation letter for the booster vaccination: ‘it will be on the doormat tomorrow, doctor.’ So they don’t have an appointment yet.”

“A 70-year-old patient was able to schedule her appointment yesterday for January 4, 2022. Yes: in 3 weeks.”

“An 86-year-old patient lost two friends in nursing homes to corona last week. “Needless, if they had received their booster in time, Doctor.” Her world has become a little smaller again. Intensly sad.”

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