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Spain's Canary Islands allow residents of all ages to request appointment for Covid-19 vaccine

The Local Spain
The Local Spain - [email protected]
Spain's Canary Islands allow residents of all ages to request appointment for Covid-19 vaccine
A health worker prepares doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Janssen vaccines against COVID-19 in the medical centre of Allariz before beginning an in-house vaccination campaign for the elderly in rural areas on April 30, 2021. (Photo by MIGUEL RIOPA / AFP)

The archipelago is the first Spanish region to allow all its eligible residents to register for an appointment to get the Covid-19 vaccine, signifying another change in inoculation strategy between Spain’s territories.

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Residents of the Canary Islands aged 16 and over can now fill in a form which will allow them to register for an appointment to get their Covid-19 vaccine, the Canary Health Council announced on Monday. 

They have to visit this website and include their full name, DNI or NIE and phone number. 

More than 30,000 people registered their details on the first day, crashing the Canary government website on several occasions. 

The applicants’ information will be compared with the database of Canary health cards and the patient will receive an SMS, within 24 to 48 hours, with the appointment - cita previa in Spanish - to be vaccinated at one of the vaccination points set up throughout the Canary Islands.

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The appointment will be scheduled according to forecasts for the islands’ vaccination calendar and the opening of each vaccination age group, so younger adults shouldn’t necessarily assume they will be inoculated soon. 

Once these age groups have been announced, applicants will be able to change their appointment if they wish. 

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The Canary Islands’ government recently confirmed that foreigners who don’t have access to public healthcare can register their contact details at local health centres so that they also can be called up for the vaccine. 

“To do so you must show your identification documentation such as your passport and a padrón certificate to demonstrate that you are a resident in the Canary Islands,” the British Embassy in Madrid explained.  

“Once registered, you will be issued an appointment for the vaccine according to the priority group you are in”.

Spain’s 17 regions are responsible for managing their own Covid-19 vaccine strategy, which has led to disparities in the way people are contacted to get the inoculation, determining whether they can book an appointment and which age groups are called up when.

Andalusia, Madrid, Navarre, Aragón and the Canary Islands are so far the regions allowing some of their inhabitants to book an appointment to get vaccinated, but aside from in the Canary Islands they have to be part of the age or priority groups being vaccinated.

The Valencian region, Catalonia, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura and Andalusia are the only autonomous communities to have started vaccinating their under 40s.

Spanish health authorities have so far administered one dose to 35.2 percent of the country’s 47 million-strong population and 17.1 percent have received the full inoculation. 

 

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