‘The modellers have already calculated it and then you see that the reproduction value decreases by about 15 percent in the winter period if you have vaccinated children from 12 years old. That can be important to keep the spread low during that period,’ he says.
In countries such as Germany and France, the Pfizer vaccine has already been approved for children from the age of 12. In the Netherlands it is now 16 years. Van Dissel: ‘You also hope to learn a lot from that. The Health Council is still advising on this, but according to our forecasts it will have an effect,’ says the RIVM boss.
Van Dissel foresees a quiet summer: ‘We are in a completely different phase with almost ten million vaccinations. That is a very important change. Until recently, we only had non-medical measures, contact reduction and isolation, to inhibit the virus. Now we have vaccines. And they seem to be doing what they’re supposed to do: they inhibit the virus by between 50 and 90 percent according to the latest studies, and they make people much less sick after exposure, up to 90 percent. Then you see a decrease in the number of patients as we see them now.’
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