Modification date 03/04/2021 - 19:40

Administering vaccines

The information on this page is intended for doctors, nurses and physician assistants that administer the vaccinations. 

Information on COVID-19 vaccines,  efficacy, side-effects, illness and medication use and pregnancy is available on the page COVID-19 vaccines. 

Administering the vaccines

Who gives the vaccinations?

The vaccinations are given by doctors, nurses and doctor’s assistants.  Nurses and doctor’s assistants may only give vaccinations if they have been delegated to do so by a doctor, or by a health professional in the registered Dutch professions of nurse specialist in general healthcare or physician assistant. Doctor’s assistants may only give vaccinations in the presence of a doctor. 


Number of doses per vaccine vial

  • For  the Pfizer/BioNTech (Comirnaty) vaccine, a special technique has been developed to extract as many doses as possible from the vials. Only care workers who have been trained to use this technique are allowed to prepare the doses in this way;
  • A maximum of eleven doses may be extracted from the Moderna vaccine vial; 
  • A maximum of twelve doses may be extracted from the AstraZeneca vaccine vial. 

Detailed instructions on vaccine preparation are provided in the Implementation Guidelines for COVID-19 Vaccination (in Dutch).

Importance of registering personal data and vaccination data

  • If problems arise with a specific vaccine, or a specific batch of a vaccine, the people who received it can be notified;
  • The invitation for the second vaccination is sent based on the registration of the first vaccination;
  • People can look up their own vaccination data later;
  • It will be possible to determine what percentage of the population has been vaccinated; 
  • The information is used to adjust the vaccination programme if necessary. Moreover, supplementing data from other sources, the information is considered key in determining whether coronavirus measures can be adjusted.

More information