Cristina Hodgson
THE countdown has begun as the first vaccines against COVID-19 will arrive in Andalucia in less than 20 days.
The Minister of the Presidency and spokesman for the Junta, Elias Bendodo, announced this Monday that the vaccination campaign, which was to start at the end of January in the community, is now being brought forward.
It’s expected that from January 4 or 5, the vaccination will be available amongst those sectors chosen for this first vaccination round.
These include residents in retirement homes, of which there are 43,000 throughout Andalucia, carers in social and health centres, elderly people with multiple illnesses living in their homes and personnel from the essential sectors, health and security forces.
The ‘vaccination order’, will follow the same protocols used for flu vaccine administration as, according to regional Health minister, Jesus Aguirre, this administration strategy ‘works very well’.
The doses will be stored in Seville and Granada, where the logistic distribution centres for the rest of Andalucia will be located.
Bidafarma is responsible for their storage (a minimum temperature of minus 80C for vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and BioNTech).
Meanwhile, custody and surveillance will be carried out by the police assigned to the autonomous community.
Aguirre assures that 70% of Andalucians will be vaccinated before the summer and that Andalucia has been “preparing” to receive the vaccines for weeks, with healthcare personnel already ‘trained’ for this purpose.
In regards to the flu campaign, the regional health minister said that 1,784,352 people in Andalucia had already been vaccinated, 57% more than in the previous campaign and that to date there are ‘zero cases’ of flu in Andalucia.
