Website for left-over vaccines takes action after massive demand

A screen shot of the website
A screen shot of the website

A website set up by several doctors to prevent coronavirus vaccine wastage is proving so successful that they have been forced to take action to limit responses.

The website Prullenbakvaccin.nl allows family doctors and other institutions to register that they have vaccines left over at the end of the day which otherwise would be thrown away. People who want to be vaccinated can then check the site and turn up for a dose, although there is no guarantee they will actually be able to have one.

However, the first ‘donation’ via a family doctor in Gouda, resulted in a queue of 100 people waiting to be jabbed. Just 20 doses were available. And a million people have visited the website since it was set up a week ago.

The health ministry has already called the project irresponsible, citing the shortage of vaccines in general.

But Amsterdam UMC professor Marlies Schijven, one of the four people behind the project, said the popularity of the website shows there is enormous demand for left over vaccines.

To ease the pressure on doctors, the website will now only show the location of available vaccines for 30 minutes and has removed the option allowing visitors to the site to zoom in on a map of the Netherlands to find the exact location.

Instead the address, but no phone number, will only appear if excess vaccines are actually available, Schijven told RTL Nieuws.

On Friday morning, 44 family doctor practices were registered for the website, but none had, as yet, any left-over vaccines available.

By May 12, nearly seven million doses of vaccine had been administered in the Netherlands.

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