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What over-70s in Spain need to know about their Covid-19 vaccines

Alex Dunham
Alex Dunham - [email protected]
What over-70s in Spain need to know about their Covid-19 vaccines
Photo: AFP

More than 6 million people in Spain over the age of 70 will get the Covid-19 vaccine from March onwards, as part of the latest regional and national government plans.

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What’s the latest?

Spain’s Ministry of Health and its regional counterparts are adding the final details to the next phase of the country’s vaccination plan, according to a report in Spanish national daily El País.

This second stage would see around 6.5 million people over the age of 70 in Spain receive the coronavirus vaccine starting in March, a month ahead of earlier estimates.

The rollout would start with people over 90, followed by those over 80 and then over 70s, although the specific time frame for each of these age groups to receive their vaccines is currently being decided. 

Around 380,000 elderly people in care homes in Spain have already received at least their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, together with tens of thousands of health professionals and dependent people who have been inoculated during the first stage of the campaign.

A total of 66.5 percent of all official deaths from Covid-19 in Spain during the second wave have been people aged 80+, even though they only represent 6 percent of the population. 

What will the process involve?

Over 70s in Spain will be contacted by their local health centre. Those who cannot go in person to the hospital will receive a home visit from nursing personnel, as often happens with the flu vaccine campaigns.

“The Health Service of each region will contact the people to be vaccinated, following the established order of prioritisation. It is important not to contact the health system individually about Covid-19 vaccines until then,” Spain's Health Ministry website states.

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Will foreigners over 70 be included in Spain’s second stage of Covid-19 vaccines?

Yes. The health ministry has stressed that Spain will not make distinctions between citizens and non-citizens and has pledged to vaccinate everyone in the country, regardless of their legal status and that includes those not registered within the social security system as well as ‘illegal' immigrants and the homeless.

"All those living in Spain will be able to receive the vaccination against the virus as the campaign unrolls. Vaccination is universal, it includes all people," insisted a Health Ministry spokesman.

Find out more here.

Are things likely to go according to plan?

If the first stage of Spain’s Covid-19 vaccine campaign is anything to go on, perhaps not quite.

Spain got off to a very slow start to its Pfizer vaccine rollout over the Christmas period due to the holidays, organisational hiccups and large regional discrepancies, but over the month of January the rate of vaccination has sped up.

More than one million doses have been administered and 76.2 percent of the available Pfizer and the newly available Moderna vaccines have now been used. That’s in stark contrast to the first week of vaccinations, when the national average stood at a lowly 11 percent.

According to Health Ministry data from January 20th, all of Spain’s regions have now used at least 58 percent of the doses they’ve received, with Cantabria, the Canary Islands, the Valencia region and Galicia proving the most efficient regions with rates over 86 percent.

The rollout of the second Covid vaccine needed for immunisation is now firmly underway, and although it seems everything is going smoother, there are reports that thousands of doses are being lost because the wrong syringes are being used and that not enough doses are being delivered to reach the 70,000 inoculations a day target

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Who will be next?

Next in line will most likely be younger people in a high risk group due to health conditions, according to the head of Spain’s Vaccination Society Amós García Rojas.

They would be followed by around eight million people who are deemed essential workers (including 5.3 million more if teachers are included).

When will they get their vaccine? Everything will depend on the vaccines made available in the coming months and if organisational and distribution problems at both a national and EU level are ironed out.

Although it remains largely forecast-based, this calculator created by a Spanish physician offers people in Spain the option of seeing when they’re likely to have the Covid-19 vaccine made available to them, based on their age, job and other conditions (calculator on left hand side of website).

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