Spain set to vaccinate all nursing home residents with first dose by weekend

Health Minister Salvador Illa announced the aim after Tuesday’s cabinet meeting insisting that the goal to protect those most vulnerable to the coronavirus would be met.

“We believe this week Spain will reach cruising speed in its vaccination plan,” Illa said.

“This weekend we continued vaccinating in many places, despite Storm Filomena,” he added.

READ ALSO: 

Spain’s vaccination plan got off to a slow start after launching on December 27th  but it has picked up and Health Ministry data shows 54.6 percent of available doses – 406,091 out of 743,925 – have already been administered across Spain.

The efficacy of the vaccination programme differs across Spain’s 17 autonomous regions where regional health authorities are in charge of administering injections once they have been distributed by the central government.

Madrid is lagging behind with only 25 percent of the available doses given, while Galicia has already used over 80 percent of their allotted doses.

This chart produced by Spain’s Health Ministry shows a breakdown of all doses given across the regions:

From next week, health authorities will begin administering the second round of the double-dose Pfizer-BioNTech jab to the earliest recipients of the first shot before embarking on vaccination of the next priority group.

On Tuesday morning Spain took delivery of Moderna’s recently-approved vaccine under a plan that will see a total of 600,000 doses in Spain by the third week of February.

The latest data showed a surge in coronavirus infections over the weekend blamed on a loosening of restrictions over Christmas to allow people to meet up with their families.

READ MORE: 

Spain calls on army convoys to send out Covid-19 vaccine and food supplies

Why is Spain’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout going so slowly?