104,000 doses arrive from Pfizer and 63,000 from Moderna to speed up vaccination of over 80s

BarcelonaToday 104,000 doses of Pfizer's vaccine against covid-19 and 63,000 doses of Moderna's will arrive. This will allow the vaccination campaign of the over-80s to accelerate. This was announced this morning in an interview with Catalunya Ràdio by the head of Catalonia's vaccination plan, Carmen Cabezas, who - as the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, told TVE on Saturday - has confirmed the forecast to have administered the first dose of the vaccine to the entire population over 80 years of age within two weeks. In addition to the doses received this Monday, Cabezas has also advanced that next week a further 185,000 Pfizer vaccines are expected.

In fact, the Department of Health hopes to accelerate the pace significantly in the coming weeks, when an increase in the arrival of the various vaccines is expected. In addition, from April and during the second quarter of the year 800,000 doses of the Janssen vaccine are expected to arrive in Catalonia. According to the Spanish government, the arrival of this new vaccine will help increase the pace and meet the goal of immunising 70% of the Spanish population this summer. The Health Department calculates to have immunized, by mid-summer, all of the most at-risk population.

In this sense, the pace of vaccination in Catalonia achieved this weekend a round figure: 10% of the Catalans have so far received the first dose of the vaccine against covid and, of these, just over half, 5.5% of the total, are fully immunised. This means two doses in the vast majority of cases, the exception being the under-56s who have already had the virus. Three months after the start of the vaccination, in Catalonia there are now almost 800,000 people who have received a first injection.

If we take into account the target population of the vaccine by age -those over 16 years-, 11.8% of the population has received a first dose, a percentage similar to the average of the countries of the European Union, which is 12.3%. As for those over 80 years of age, 22.8% have so far received the full vaccination schedule and 36.7% have received the first dose.

So far, where most progress has been made is in the field of care homes, which was the priority: in Catalonia 91.2% of residents and 75.1% of the staff working in these centers are already immunised. As for health care workers, which was the other top priority, 75.5% of primary care and hospital staff have been vaccinated with the full schedule, while 55.2% of other health and social health care staff have received the first dose and 8.9% have already completed the vaccination.

The group where the advances are now more noticeable is in the population between 60 and 65 years, which last week began receiving the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, after the Ministry of Health decided to increase the age limit to 65. Of the total, 9.7% have already received the first dose