The first 9,750 doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine arrived in Luxembourg in December. On 16 February, 25,918 jabs had been administered - 19,622 of them received a first vaccine, 6,296 a second. This week, however, Luxembourg has 52,650 vaccines in stock, allowing 26,325 people to be vaccinated.
More vaccines will become available in the upcoming weeks. Luxembourg will have obtained 150,000 doses by the end of March if producers are able to comply with their delivery schedules. Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson have applied for EU approval. This would make it the fourth vaccine available in the EU.
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The following graph outlines Luxembourg’s vaccine stock between late December and the end of March. The blue line indicates how many people received their first jab, the red line measures the number of second doses administered. The green line presents the number of available doses by the end of March.
Now that the Ministry of Health has decided to adapt the schedule for the AstraZeneca vaccine, increasing the interval between the first and the second dose from 4 to 10 weeks, Luxembourg could speed up its vaccination campaign. To date, the ministry plans to have vaccinated 71,355 people until the end of March 2021.
Early studies have shown that individuals infected with Covid-19 may only require one dose of the vaccine, as the infection quasi replaces a first jab, and the second vaccine would act as a boost. Current data on the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine also indicate a possible extension of the interval.
