Pace of vaccination urgently needs to be accelerated
On 27 December 2020 all the media reported, amid great expectation, the start of vaccination against covid-19 in Catalonia. The lucky one was Josefa Pérez, 89 years old and a resident at the Feixa Llarga nursing home in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, who on January 18 received the second dose from Pfizer-BioNTech. The fact is that three months have already passed, and in this time only 10% of Catalans have received at least the first dose (11.8% if we count only those over 16 years), with which it is considered that there is already a high level of immunity. But if we look at the percentage of the population that has already received both doses and has already completed the entire immunisation schedule, this figure drops to a poor 5.5% of the total. In the European Union as a whole, the figures are not very different, with 12.3% of the population over 18 vaccinated.
It is true that this 10% is not just any 10%, but the population considered to be at risk, either because of age, health or because they are health or teaching staff. Thus, if we focus on the data, we see for example that 60% of people considered elderly dependents have already received both doses, and 36.7% of those over 80 years have already received the first dose and 22.8% the full schedule. Even so, the rate of vaccination is slower than initially anticipated due to the problems of vaccine supply that all EU countries are suffering, and this is having consequences both in terms of deaths and economic impact. Thus, it is not the same to have reached Easter with only 10% vaccinated than with 30% or 40%, which are the figures that are expected to be achieved at the gates of the summer.
Indeed, the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, promised yesterday that in two weeks the entire population over 80 will be vaccinated, a difficult goal to achieve seeing the current figures. In any case, it is essential to accelerate the pace of vaccination so that vulnerable population are vaccinated by summer and a sufficient amount of people are also immunized so that there can be a ceratin return to normality. If the promised vaccines finally arrive, such as the Janssen 800,000 doses, the Generalitat will have to activate the mass vaccination plan presented by vice president, Pere Aragonès, and Health Minister, Alba Vergés.
The key will be the ability of the European Commission to make pharmaceutical companies meet their commitments and not allow them to divert vaccines manufactured in Europe to other places, as happened with a batch of AstraZeneca. In this sense, the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has reacted quickly by tightening the conditions for exporting vaccines. The current age limit for the AstraZeneca vaccine (only up to 65 years of age) should also be reviewed, as it is responsible for the delay in vaccinating older people. In the next few weeks everything should be fixed to start this mass vaccination that we have seen in countries like the UK and Israel.
