There is no complete overview of who in the Netherlands has been vaccinated against coronavirus and the figures currently collated by the CIMS registration system only includes around 70% of the total, according to the government’s Covid-19 Outbreak Management Team.

The CIMS keeps a record of who has been vaccinated, when and with what vaccine, and gets its information from hospitals, regional health boards, healthcare institutes and family doctors.

But currently, most of the registrations come from the health boards, and the OMT is urging other institutions to make sure that they pass the information on promptly as well.

The lack of information not only makes it unclear how many people have been vaccinated, but makes it impossible to evaluate the programme, such as by highlighting positive coronavirus tests involving people who have been vaccinated, the OMT said.

Some 7% of people who have been vaccinated have declined to have their details shared with the RIVM, which is currently working on developing a secondary, anonymised system.

The OMT is recommending the government ‘investigate how a complete Covid-19 vaccination register can be implemented quickly’ as has also been achieved in other European countries.

According to the government’s coronavirus dashboard, nearly 5.3 million vaccinations have been placed in the Netherlands so far.