It's been a little less than three months since a pioneering ruling issued in Barcelona recognized the blood clots suffered by a teacher after being vaccinated against COVID with AstraZeneca doses as an occupational accident. Now, the Social Court No. 3 of Burgos has issued a very similar ruling, but with one relevant difference: in this case, the affected woman had received a first dose of AstraZeneca and two of Pfizer.

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.

When 2020 was just beginning, the existence of companies like BioNTech or Moderna was unknown to most mortals. Also unknown then was the importance that pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson or AstraZeneca would gain in our daily lives in the fight against the pandemic that was officially declared on March 11, 2020.

June will see a record arrival of vaccines that will give a big boost to the immunology process. The president of the Spanish government has announced the arrival during the month of June of 13 million doses from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer alone, a figure that will mean receiving a million more doses per week than at the current rate. Last week Pedro Sanchez said that the vaccination was making huge leaps forward and even marked August 18 as the date by which it has to get the expected herd immunity, i.e. about 70% of the population covered. "We have 97 days left," proclaimed a euphoric Sanchez, who always makes sure he gets to make the announcements for big news in the fight against the pandemic.

Two doses of the Pfizer vaccine is not enough to be immunised for life against covid-19. Uğur Şahin, co-founder of the German laboratory BioNTech, which developed this vaccine, confirmed on Wednesday that, after nine months to a year after the second injection, it will be necessary to receive a third one so that the level of protection offered by the vaccine does not drop more than necessary. And, from then on, the operation will have to be repeated every twelve to eighteen months.

A single dose of covid vaccine can stop transmission of the virus by almost 50%. The data comes from a study, yet to be reviewed, made public on Wednesday morning by Public Health England (PHE).