Vaccination against COVID-19 in Spain’s Andalucia to begin in January

THE Junta has announced that the vaccination programme against COVID-19 in Andalucia will begin in the New Year.

The aim is for the majority of the population to be immunised ‘in three or four months’, according to Jesus Aguirre, Regional Minister for Health and Families.

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During a radio interview, Aguirre also revealed that the Junta has the protocols ‘ready’ for when the doses of the COVID-19 vaccinations begin to arrive and that healthcare personnel are already being ‘trained’ for this purpose.

The United Kingdom has already granted emergency approval to the coronavirus vaccine and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which is in charge of approving COVID-19 vaccines for the EU, said on Tuesday it would decide by December 29 whether to provisionally authorise the vaccine from US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.

That being the case, Spain’s central government expects 80 million doses from the various companies to arrive early in 2021 with distribution in each autonomous community to be made according to the population.

Aguirre explained, there are ‘different protocols for each vaccine’ however the ‘vaccination order’, will follow the same protocols used for flu vaccine administration as, according to the health minister, this administration strategy ‘works very well’.

Additionally, it’s expected that vaccination centres will be set up outside the health centres to avoid the agglomeration of people.