ARCHIVED - Period between Covid infection and vaccination slashed in Alicante

The Valencia region, including Alicante province, has reduced the time span to two months

The Valencia region's Ministry of Health has cut the period between Covid infection and vaccination from six months to eight weeks.

The central government ruled that any changes of protocol regarding the immunisation of those who have recovered from coronavirus can be made at regional level, and Valencia has agreed that certain people who tested positive in mid-July for example, will no longer have to wait until the end of the year to receive their first or second jab.

As such, the health department has already begun summoning those people who have not completed their vaccination because they were positive at the time of their original appointment.

This means around 20,000 people in the region's three province, including Alicante, who tested positive between late February and mid-June - when the roll-out of vaccines accelerated to cover larger age groups - will be given a second opportunity to be immunised.

But this won't apply to anybody over the age of 65, who were recalled as soon as they were given the all clear.

The new protocol will instead benefit an additional 60,000 young people between 12 and 39-years-old who were infected during the latest phase of the pandemic, and had not yet been summoned for their jabs so faced a six month wait to be immunised.

"These people will now receive appointments between the end of this month and mid-October", says the health department, adding that the "shortening of the deadline has been made possible following the arrival of extra Pfizer and Moderna doses".

The decision has the approval of experts, with Fisabio Foundation researcher and expert in Public Health, Salvador Peiró, assuring that the six months between infection and vaccination "was not a time fixed by clinical studies but by knowing that antibodies, after infection, last for at least six months".

A 58-year-old woman from Elda, who reportedly refused vaccination, has died of serious lung damage after being diagnosed with Covid.

IMAGE: GVA