De Jonge sparks row with health chiefs over vaccine ‘underreporting’

Health minister Hugo de Jonge has come under fire for suggesting that the Netherlands’ low vaccination figures are the result of slow reporting in the healthcare system.

The government added 120,000 to the number of vaccinations carried out so far on Sunday, bringing the total to 346,790.

In an explanatory note on its website the government said the calculation method had been changed to a ‘best estimate’ to correct ‘underreporting’ by hospitals and long-term care institutions.

De Jonge tweeted the new figures with a note referring to the underreporting, adding that 250,000 vaccines were planned for the coming week. The minister had earlier come under fire because the target for last week of 212,000 was not met according to the previous counting method.

#Vaccinatie
Stand van zaken 31 januari 2021:

➡️ 346.790 prikken gezet
➡️ Onderrapportage is gecorrigeerd o.b.v. cijfers afgeleverde vaccins
➡️ Komende week zo’n kwart miljoen geplande prikken erbij
👉 https://t.co/Q0xJDENZhR#werkinuitvoering 💉🦠 pic.twitter.com/Kn1CEb7Hfy

— Hugo de Jonge (@hugodejonge) January 31, 2021

‘In order to arrive at the best possible estimate of the number of injections performed, from January 31 2021 the figure will temporarily be supplanted by a arithmetical assumption,’ the government said on its coronavirus dashboard.

It said that while the network of local health boards (GGD) update their vaccination figures daily, the two other sources of data – hospitals and the long-term care sector – took longer to process the numbers, so their figures will be estimated from now on.

But the National Acute Care Network (LNAZ) described De Jonge’s statement as ‘blatantly untrue’ and refuted the suggestion that hospitals were giving incomplete information.

‘Given that the hospitals are also vaccinating family doctors, the LNAZ has also reported the vaccination figures from the surgeries,’ it said in a statement. ‘Both figures are frequently reported to the ministry for health and published on the LNAZ website, the ministry’s dashboard and in the media.’

The revised figure has the effect of propelling the Netherlands up from 26th place in the European Union’s league table of vaccines by population to 23rd, overtaking Latvia, Luxembourg and Croatia. According to the new method just over 2% of the population received their first dose by the end of January.