Vergés denies having delayed vaccines for police officers and says he was following 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 agents of the National Police and the Civil Guard 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 of age. 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 asked directly, she denied giving any order to delay vaccination for the agents.

"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," explained Vergés. 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, explaining the Council's decision and asking 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 the prioritization of vaccination for the elderly, because it was the age group that registered the most deaths and hospitalizations due to covid. "At that time, no one younger than 80 years old had been able to be vaccinated, and it was absolutely a priority to go down by age," she defended.

"I will never forget"

When she had already been answering the prosecutor's and defense attorneys' questions for nearly an hour, Vergés's voice broke as she recalled those dates: "We had been managing the pandemic for a year without vaccines. I went out to press conferences every day and was at the head of the Health department, and I explained to 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 it, 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 directed CatSalut, will also testify before the court. Last Tuesday, former Minister of Health Josep Maria Argimon, who was then director of the Catalan Health Institute and Secretary of Public Health, already 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.