Vergés denies having delayed vaccines to police officers and says he followed orders from the Interterritorial Council

BarcelonaIt is the turn of the former Minister of Health Alba Vergés to explain herself at the trial for the vaccination against covid of the National Police and Civil Guard officers stationed in Catalonia. In her statement, she focused on explaining that they always followed the criteria set by the Interterritorial Council of Health on the vaccination strategy, even when it was decided to prioritize AstraZeneca doses for people between 55 and 65 years old. This, she clarified, did not prevent essential worker groups – such as police officers, healthcare personnel, or teachers – from continuing to receive doses, but it had to be done "as vaccines became available." In fact, when directly asked, she denied giving any order to delay vaccination for the officers.

"Our intention from the beginning was to vaccinate everyone, including essential groups. As decided in the Council meeting, we start with the oldest, but we are not saying that essential workers cannot be vaccinated at the same time," Vergés explained. In fact, she pointed out that one of the messages in the case file is the one she sent to the "Important coronavirus" group, which she shared with other health officials, where she explained the Council's decision and asked them: "Let's make it all compatible."

Vergés added that it was the Ministry of Health that distributed the vaccines among the autonomous communities, and that the scarcity of doses was what led to prioritizing vaccination for the elderly, as it was the age group that registered the most deaths and hospitalizations due to covid. "At that time, no one younger than 80 had been vaccinated, and it was absolutely a priority to go down by age," she defended.

The former minister recalled that the AstraZeneca vaccine was temporarily discontinued because adverse side effects had been detected. She recalled that until then this vaccine had been dedicated to essential worker groups, not just police officers, and that at that time many saw their vaccination appointments canceled. When vaccination with AstraZeneca resumed, there were 100,000 doses available for half a million people between 60 and 65 years old, including police officers.

"I will never forget it"

When she had been answering the questions of the prosecutor and the defense lawyers for almost an hour, Vergés's voice broke as she recalled those dates: "We had been managing the pandemic without vaccines for a year. I went out every day to press conferences and was in charge of the Health department, and I told people the number of people who were dying, who were being admitted to the ICU... Vaccines were the hope for change."

"We always wanted to vaccinate everyone as quickly as possible," Vergés insisted. "I will never forget, there was a brutal paradigm shift in the residences when we started vaccinating," she added.

This Friday, former Secretary General of Health Marc Ramentol; the then director of services, Xavier Rodríguez, and Adrià Comella, who headed CatSalut, will also testify before the court. Last Tuesday, former Minister of Health Josep Maria Argimon, who was then director of the Catalan Institute of Health and Secretary of Public Health, also testified. All face a sentence of twelve years of disqualification for prevarication for allegedly having "discriminated" against police officers and civil guards when it came to vaccination. The trial will resume on Monday morning, when the prosecution will have the opportunity to ratify or modify the sentence they are seeking.

A "specific treatment"

For his part, Ramentol ratified Vergés' version and assured that at no time did they want to discriminate against anyone. On the contrary, he said that the National Police and the Civil Guard were the only bodies that received "specific treatment", because they were not vaccinated in health centers, but rather health personnel traveled to police facilities. He also pointed out that, just before the Ministry of Health ordered to stop vaccination with AstraZeneca due to the thrombosis it had caused, about 200 civil guards were vaccinated in three days, and 700 more when a ruling by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) ordered it to be done immediately.

Rodríguez referred to this judicial order, which "caused a serious distortion" because it forced them to disregard the criterion of prioritizing older people and, in addition, forced the agents to use Moderna doses, which was then reserved for people with serious pathologies. "It is one of the most serious things that have occurred in the vaccination process in Catalonia, and it affects me personally," he said. Finally, Comella took advantage of his statement to emphasize that they were complying with what was established by the vaccination strategy of the Interterritorial Council, and insisted on the complexity of organizing it.