Kirsty Mckenzie
THE south of Spain will consider sourcing its own vaccines if supplies from the central government don’t improve, said the head of the Junta de Andalucía said.
Juanma Moreno slammed the pace of the roll out to the southern province as ‘infuriating’.
Speaking in Cadiz yesterday (Wednesday, April 8) Moreno criticised prime minister, Pedro Sánchez for the failure.
“Our Moroccan neighbours have more people vaccinated than Andalucía and the whole of Spain; it does not make any sense,” he said.
“Europe is one of the leading and most prosperous regions in the world and that leadership has to be demonstrated in the field of vaccines,” he said.
The president of the regional government pointed out that, since the beginning of the health crisis, the Andalusian government has agreed that the acquisition of vaccines should be done centrally by the European Union, since with the economies of scale it is easier to do it for a population of 370 million.
He went on: “Given the exasperating pace with which vaccines are arriving, this is forcing some countries and regions to individually negotiate the purchase of vaccines.
”We have to remedy this situation, because if the European and national authorities do not do it urgently, the possibility that many regions will unilaterally negotiate for vaccines, will probably multiply.”
On Tuesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the vaccination programme was accelerating and 33 million people, which is 70% of the adult population of Spain, would be fully inoculated by the end of August.
So far in Spain just over 9 million doses have been administered and 2,902,291 people have received two doses.
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