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ARCHIVED - Health Minister says Spain will have a vaccine for 10 million people by early 2021
The Minister denied that Spain plans to force the vulnerable to be vaccinated
On Monday positive news about the progress of the Pfizer and BioNTech coronavirus vaccine sent stock markets and optimism levels soaring, with hopes rising that at end to the restrictions imposed as a result of the pandemic, could be on the horizon.
Spain has committed to the EU joint buying initiative, thus ensuring that a certain quantity of whichever vaccine is made available will be allocated for priority patients here from the first batches available.
Spanish Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, said on Tuesday that news that the vaccine of the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech is "90% effective", is an "important, promising and relevant step", although at the same time he urged against over-optimism, saying that "there are still difficult months" ahead and it is not advisable to "lower our guard."
The Minister stated that the EU will close a contract with BioNTech / Pfizer and other companies for the distribution of antidotes against covid "this week or next week" and, from there, Spain "calculates" that by early 2021, 20 million doses of Pfizer's antigen would be delivered to the country, which will "immunize about 10 million people," as two injections are required to achieve protection.
"If everything goes as planned [...] at the beginning of January with this and perhaps other vaccines a vaccination phase will begin and we calculate that in May there will be a sufficiently relevant percentage of the Spanish and European population vaccinated," he said in an interview in 'La hora de la 1' on TVE.
According to the minister's prediction, if nothing goes wrong, the pandemic "will enter a different stage," by May, hence the decision of the Government to bring the state of alarm to a conclusion at that point.
Illa explained that although the government has not "ruled out" forcing vulnerable residents to be vaccinated, he hopes that it will not be necessary to go to this extreme because he hopes that the Spanish population will respond in "favorable terms" to the vaccination campaign. He used the flu vaccination campaign as an example; this year there has been a significant increase in the voluntary uptake of the influenza vaccination, with a 30% to 40% increase in the number of people requesting the flu vaccine when compared to last year.
Flu still kills around 4,000 people a year in Spain, in spite of a concerted annual campaign to persuade those falling into more vulnerable groups to vaccinate against flu, and it is always poignant that when the flu figures are published each spring there is always a very high percentage of individuals who chose not to vaccinate amongst the deceased; this year the campaign is proving so successful that it has been difficult to get a vaccine early in the campaign in some areas due to the level of demand.
The Minister expressed his determination not to allow a similar type of mis-information campaign such as that which influenced so many people in the early days of the covid pandemic to stop the vulnerable being vaccinated: "We are going to be clear and forceful with the people who tell lies and who play anti-science, we are not going to tolerate it," the minister said about the anti-vaccine movement.
So far the European Commission has also entered into negotiations with the companies CureVac and Moderna while it has signed contracts with three other pharmaceutical companies: AstraZeneca, for 300 million doses, Sanofi-GSK, for another 300 million doses, and with Johnson & Johnson, for 200 million doses.
Vaccines free of charge:
The antigens that are authorized by the European medicine agency will be distributed free of charge in the health centers and the groups that are vaccinated first will be those decided by the group of experts formed weeks ago by the Government, the autonomous communities and scientific societies: "Here we are going to be guided by what the experts tell us, but the information I have been given so far from this working party is that it will start with the most vulnerable groups", he said, indicating that the elderly, the groups with a greater predisposition to suffer severe covid and healthcare professionals will take priority.
Stabilization of the pandemic
During his interview, the Minister once again ruled out the possibility of the government decreeing a home confinement (or lockdown), stating that the current data show a "certain stabilization" of the pandemic and that first it is necessary to evaluate the measures that are being taken under the state of alarm before carrying out more drastic measures that, "sincerely", the Government believes can be "avoided".
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