Spain begins vaccination against Covid-19 of up to two million people at risk

USPA NEWS - Spain began this Sunday the vaccination against Covid-19 of up to two million elderly people housed in residences throughout the country, health workers and personnel who work with the elderly. At 9:00 a.m. this Sunday, Araceli Rosario Hidalgo, intern at the Los Olmos de Guadalajara nursing home - 41.63 miles from Madrid - since 2013 and born in 1924, was together with Mónica Tapias, born in 1972, an auxiliary nursing care technician (TCAE it's Spanish acronym) who has worked in this center for ten years, the first two people to receive the vaccine against COVID-19 in Spain.

Araceli has a daughter and a son, four grandchildren and a great-grandson, and she is a native of Guadix, in the province of Granada, although she has been registered in Guadalajara for 25 years, while Mónica is a native of Guadalajara. Subsequently, all regions and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, on the North African coast, will begin to vaccinate with the initial batch that began to be distributed on Saturday from the Guadalajara warehouse to which the first vials arrived from Belgium. Thus begins the first of the three stages established in the National Vaccination Strategy, in which the four priority groups are residents and health and social health personnel in residences for the elderly and disabled; front-line health personnel; other health and social health personnel, and large non-institutionalized dependents.

The European Union begins this Sunday vaccination in a coordinated strategy in all countries that has been followed from the moment it was agreed to jointly acquire vaccines against the disease. As of this Monday, an average of 350,000 doses will be sent every week to the Spanish regions. In total, in the next twelve weeks, Spain will receive 4,591,275 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, with which 2,295,638 people will be immunized.

Extreme security measures

At 07:29 a.m. on Saturday, the truck transporting the vaccines from Belgium arrived at the Guadalajara warehouse. Technicians from the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) signed the receipt of this first delivery. These are batches of the vaccine developed by the Pfizer and BioNTech laboratories, destined for the countries of the European Union, which left on Wednesday in thermal containers from the Belgian plant in Puurs. Said doses will be distributed equally among the designated points in all regions with the aim that this Sunday vaccination begins throughout Spain.