Up to 253 people, mostly babies, have received an expired vaccine in Basque health centers. This was confirmed on Tuesday by the Basque Health Service, Osakidetza, after EH Bildu reported the case. However, the Basque Government has assured that the error "does not pose any health risks or adverse effects." The vaccine in question is a hexavalent vaccine, administered to combat diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, and hepatitis B, and the doses administered belonged to a batch "whose expiration date had recently passed." "Public Health wishes to convey a message of reassurance, given that, according to experts, no adverse effects are anticipated from the administration of these doses. All cases are under control, and the recommendations of expert public health bodies are being followed," the Basque Health Service emphasized. The Basque Government assures that each and every case is "perfectly identified" and is contacting the families to inform them directly and offer the necessary guidance. Osakidetza (the Basque Health Service) has consulted the case with various authorities, such as the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) and the Basque Country Vaccine Advisory Council (CAVE), as well as the manufacturer of the expired batch.

When the cold weather arrives, respiratory viruses—such as the flu, COVID-19, or the common cold—find the ideal conditions to circulate. Low temperatures lead us to spend more time indoors in less ventilated spaces, which promotes transmission. Given this, the best strategy is to take care of ourselves every day and reinforce prevention in different ways: get vaccinated, maintain healthy habits, and look out for others.

In the information age, half-truths and rumors also abound. Social media and messaging apps have become spaces where scientifically unfounded claims about vaccines circulate. But behind every myth lies an explanation that science has long since debunked. That's why the Department of Health insists: being well-informed is just as important as getting vaccinated.

The coming winter brings a host of challenges: low temperatures, increased virus circulation, and a healthcare system that must prepare to face them. In this context, flu and COVID-19 vaccinations are reaffirmed as one of the most effective tools for protection, both individually and collectively. This year, the Department of Health is launching the vaccination campaign with a clear message: getting vaccinated is an act of love. This idea means that vaccination is not just a matter of personal health: it's a way to protect the people we love and the environment in which we live. When we choose to get vaccinated, we also contribute to reducing potential complications from these diseases, easing the pressure on healthcare services, and maintaining normal daily life. Every season, the question returns: "Why should I get vaccinated if I'm healthy?" The answer is twofold: because the vaccine protects you and others. Even if you have no pre-existing conditions and are in excellent health, the flu and COVID-19 are still infections that can lead to serious complications, especially when the viruses affect vulnerable individuals. For example, 75% of people admitted to the ICU with the flu were unvaccinated.

The arrival of immunotherapy in hospitals, the birth of gene editing and walking devices, the first drugs against Alzheimer's and injections for weight loss... It's difficult to look back and choose just a few milestones that demonstrate how, in the last fifteen years, medicine has funneled through countless advancements. Since 2010, tens of millions of medical articles have been published in high-impact journals, and as you read these lines, scientists and laboratories are not slowing down. Since its first issues, the ARA has reported on and delved into many of these achievements, and has not been oblivious to the ethical and economic challenges that health research has faced. Nor has it been unaware of the profound crisis of confidence that some disciplines have experienced in the last five years.

IB-Salut, the public health service of the Balearic Islands, has refused to reinstate Dr. Nadiya Popel, who worked in the Emergency Department of the Mateu Orfila Hospital in Mahón until she was expelled in September 2023. She will now serve two years. The news was announced on Menorca Diary.

The White House announced Wednesday night that it had removed the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Susan Monarez, for not aligning with the president's agenda. In an email, a spokesman for Donald Trump, Kush Desai, said that Monarez "is not aligned with the president's agenda of Making America Healthy Again" and therefore, "the White House has removed Monarez from her position with the CDC," according to the report. The New York Times.

Since February, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the Secretary of Health of the government of Donald Trump, the top public health official in the United States. It's terrible news for the entire planet. It's hard to predict which of the ideas Trump has implemented since returning to power will have the most profound negative impact on a global scale, but putting a conspiracy theorist anti-vaccine in charge of the health care of 340 million people has a good chance of winning the jackpot. The problem is that this prize will be paid in human lives.

Developed in record time, SARS-CoV-2 vaccines changed the course of the Covid pandemic that ravaged the world five years ago. In the first year of administration alone, they prevented 14.4 million deaths in 185 countries and regions, according to a study by Imperial College London published in The Lancet. This data was added to another later work by the WHO which estimated that these prophylactic drugs had prevented half of the hospitalizations due to covid in Europe, as well as 50% of the serious cases of the disease and deaths.

Statistically, there are few cases and most of them are mild. However, adverse effects associated with inflammation of the heart muscle, such as myocarditis or pericarditis, seem to have a tendency to increase as the covid vaccination campaign progresses, especially from the second dose onwards. The specific causes of this phenomenon are currently unknown, and the statistics do not indicate that it is a major public health problem, especially when compared with the millions of doses administered worldwide. However, an article published in the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), the journal of the powerful U.S. medical association, notes that more cases of myocarditis and pericarditis are being detected than "expected" in young adults. The data "do not call into question" the benefits of mass vaccination, although they do provide "a point of concern," according to the study's authors.

The idea that we are moving towards the end of covid restrictions is beginning to take hold. This is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it serves to move towards a certain social normality and, therefore, also to encourage the much-needed economic recovery; on the other hand, it may give the impression that the pandemic has been overcome and that no measures need to be taken, which is not yet the case. Epidemiological data have begun to decline, but we are still at very high levels of infection and a long way from emptying ICUs and hospitals. Therefore, we cannot confuse wishful thinking with reality, nor should we rush more than necessary, as has already happened in other phases of this long health crisis that has claimed too many lives. It is therefore in this middle ground that the Government's announcement to suspend quarantines in schools in the near future and to reopen nightlife as of February 11 must be understood. In the first case, it is a request from both paediatricians and families; both would also like the compulsory use of masks for children in the playground and classrooms to expire, which will not happen yet. It seems prudent to postpone it a little longer and make it coincide with the moment when it will also cease to be mandatory for adults in the street. It is true that, after so many months, a few more weeks won't make a difference: we can assume the inconvenience for a while longer. The day masks come off there will be a strong sense of psychological liberation that could be mistaken for an end to the pandemic. Therefore, it is better not to whip up false euphoria. It is true that there are countries that have stepped on the accelerator of the end of restrictions. Denmark would be the most remarkable case, but it is a country that has made very radical changes throughout the health crisis, and they have not always worked.

Our call is answered by an assistant with an executive air who, once she has checked that everything is in order,at the time we had agreed upon, brings on screen Dr. Özlem Türeci (Lastrup, Germany, 1967), co-founder and medical director of BioNTech, the company from which, together with Pfizer, she was able to develop one of the vaccines against covid-19. Dr. Türeci attends this interview from Mainz and expresses herself with the clarity of someone who is used to explaining scientific concepts with profane expressions and the simplicity of those who have achieved gigantic success. The biographical notes on this researcher and entrepreneur of Turkish parents present her as one of the richest women in Germany (it is estimated that in 2022 alone Pzifer-BioNTech will have a turnover of 37.77 billion euros for the covid vaccine). Özlem Türeci received the Catalonia 2020 International Award this week, which honored her and three other women, all fighters against the coronavirus.

Families interested in making an appointment to vaccinate children aged between 5 and 11 can start doing so at vacunacovid.catsalut.gencat.cat as of this Monday at 2 p.m., after the first 234,000 paediatric Pfizer doses landed in Catalonia. In addition to the first 1.3 million doses that have arrived in Spain, the Spanish government has announced that 1.2 million more will arrive between December and January. In total, 2.5 million vaccines.

The impunity of airlines continues to be one of the EU legislation's weak points. When to this endemic situation you add the casuistry caused by covid and, on top of that, by Brexit, the result is a sum of nonsense and arbitrariness that ends up costing passengers money and time. And when it comes to complaining, if they decide to do so, even if only by principle, passengers are powerless, as are public consumer protection agencies.

Half of the people between 20 and 40 who have not yet been vaccinated against covid in Catalonia do not believe it is necessary. They may not distrust the vaccine nor doubt the existence of the virus, but they pay no attention to the pandemic. Getting vaccinated is not a priority in their lives, either because they do not believe that the coronavirus is dangerous for them and they are not worried about getting infected or falling ill, or because they have already been infected, mostly with mild symptoms, and now they trivialise the effects of contagion. To find out their reasons for not getting vaccinated, the Department of Health has called about 15,000 young people aged 20 to 40 who have declined immunisation. It has confirmed that not only the absence of fear of the virus plays an important role in this refusal: distrust of the vaccine and its side effects also holds back 27% of respondents. On the other hand, only 5% say they refuse to be vaccinated because they are denialists.

A total of 69,129 vaccine doses against covid-19 have expired in Catalonia, according to the Secretary of Public Health, Carmen Cabezas, who has attributed it to a miscalculation: they believed the rate of vaccination would increase in Setember after it fell in August, which has not happened. "The predictive models showed that in September the number of people who wanted to get vaccinated would recover, but it has been lower than expected. In addition, at vaccination points with no prior appointment we had to make sure there were vaccines available for everyone who wanted one, and this has meant some centres asked for more doses than they were able to administer in the end," she explained.

With 70% of the population vaccinated against covid with the full schedule, Catalonia faces the challenge of increasing the percentage of those immunised, especially in the younger age groups, to try to keep the pandemic under control. After the experience of the previous waves, the forecasts point that at the end of September or at the beginning of October the virus will revive. Biocomsc researcher at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Clara Prats, says that the two most likely scenarios in October are local outbreaks or a milder surge. Therefore, she warns the protection would be "greater" with 80% of the population having been vaccinated. Immunisation has prevented up to 9,500 deaths in Catalonia and the peak in ICUs of the fifth wave exceeded the first, according to Prats.

Are there differences between men and women when it comes to vaccination against the coronavirus? A priori the answer is yes: in Catalonia women are vaccinated slightly more than men, specifically 3.6% more. While 77.7% of Catalan women have already completed the vaccination schedule, the figure falls to 74.1% in the case of men. However, this disparity is not homogeneous: women are vaccinated more often when they are younger, while men are more likely to be vaccinated from the age of 60 onward. For the first time since the pandemic began, the Department of Health has made public the vaccination coverage of the population taking into account two demographic factors, age and gender, and the current values show small but significant differences.

Changes in the Catalan vaccination protocol: from now on people who have had covid can be vaccinated if a minimum of two months since they were infected has passed. Until now, the Department of Health set at six months the period that people with a diagnosis of coronavirus had to wait before they could access the vaccine. Only those over 65 years of age were excluded from this criterion and could be immunised almost immediately after recovering from the infection because they are more likely to suffer complications in case of infection. Now, however, the measure affects all vaccinable age groups, i.e. from the age of 12.

The WHO this week called for no third dose - or booster or reminder dose - until at least 10 per cent of the world's population is vaccinated. Even so, countries such as Israel have already started injecting it into immunocompromised patients and people over 60, and France and Germany announced Thursday that they will also give it to the elderly and the most vulnerable. Spain is also considering this option: the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, said that "everything indicates that the third dose will have to be administered" - although she did not specify whether to certain groups or to the general population - and the Secretary of Public Health of the Generalitat, Carmen Cabezas, said that they are studying giving a third injection to immunocompromised patients, such as transplant recipients or people undergoing cancer treatment, for example. But is a third dose really necessary to have immunity against covid?