UNDER PRESSURE, NETHERLANDS AGREES TO SPEED UP COVID VACCINATION

The Dutch government yielded to public pressure and announced that it will start giving jabs to health workers next week, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported.

Although the European Union approved the use of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19 last month, the Netherlands is the only EU country that has not yet started vaccinations.

The Dutch government had argued that it needed the extra time to make sure its roll-out of the vaccinations would go smoothly. Any problems with the start would have dented confidence in the programme, it argued.

The plan was to start jabs on January 8, at the earliest, and even then only symbolically ahead of a full-blown January 18 start.

But the delay prompted a backlash from medical professionals, arguing that the government was risking lives as 175,000 doses of the vaccine went unused in a warehouse in the country's east.

Under the new plan announced on Saturday, about 30,000 hospital workers will get vaccinated in the coming week. More concrete plans are still scheduled to be announced.

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