Health Minister expects to start vaccinating the population aged between 40 and 49 in June
Health Department authorises mutual insurance companies to immunise workers as doses become more available
BarcelonaIn the month of June more vaccines are expected than ever before and the Minister of Health, Alba Vergés, foresees that the vaccination campaign of the population aged 40 to 49 will start then. The condition, however, will be -as always- the availability of doses. According to what Vergés mentioned on Wednesday in an interview on RAC1 radio station, if the pharmaceutical companies meet the delivery deadlines of the European Union, in early summer the Government is confident that it will be possible to immunise "more intensely" and start the mass vaccination campaign. A strategy that will reach its peak in July, when it is expected that about five million Catalans are immunised.
In fact, Health is opening new mass vaccination sites throughout the country and, for example, on 1 June, the indoor athletics track in Sabadell will be converted into a vaccination site for the population of Vallès Occidental, Vallès Oriental, Maresme and Barcelonès Nord. The facility is expected to administer around 6,000 vaccinations every day.
However, before starting the vaccination of this population it will be necessary to advance in the protection of those between 50 and 59, which will only begin on Monday, 10th May. According to the deputy director of Health Promotion and responsible for the vaccination plan, Carmen Cabezas, vaccination without age bands will "most likely" start when the protection of people aged 40-49 years is advanced.
For the time being, immunisation will gain momentum with the proliferation of new vaccination sites, but also when mutual insurance companies begin to vaccinate workers. As announced on Tuesday by the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivá, their incorporation will be "immediate" when "more vaccines" arrive. Social Security has signed an agreement with the employers' CEOE and the Association of Mutual Work Accidents (AMAT) for entities to make private infrastructures available to the State and the autonomous communities.
"Achieving 70% vaccination coverage is absolutely feasible. Almost 7,000 employees of mutual insurance companies are at the disposal of the health authorities, the vaccination process that the Ministry of Health marks, and we all have to be satisfied", said Escrivá, who has linked the authorization to an acceleration in the arrival of weekly doses.
The autonomous communities are competent to decide whether they want to use this network. In February, the Secretary General for Health, Marc Ramentol, already anticipated that Health would put the staff of mutual accident insurance companies and risk prevention services to vaccinate "when the time comes". This is when the rhythm of vaccine deliveries is sufficiently fluid and stable to implement this mass vaccination.
"Logistics to improve"
The pact, which also aims to give impetus to the implementation of diagnostic tests, leaves the door open for the collaborating mutuals and the public administration to establish the necessary actions to integrate private resources into the public health network, which would free up primary care teams, and state the monitoring mechanisms and the obligations and commitments assumed by the parties. Escrivá has assured that the vaccination process will "intensify" in the coming months and has described as very "timely" the incorporation of these private resources to the vaccination campaign, since they will allow for "logistics to improve" and the vaccination process to accelerate.
The president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, stressed that the mutuals are "capillary" in the territory, with more than 1,500 centres throughout the country, and that all companies with more than 250 workers have medical departments "and will be able to vaccinate as soon as they have the vaccines and the health authority authorises it". The president of AMAT, José Carlos Lacasa, also stressed that the mutual insurance companies are "ready to go into operation" and urged Escrivá to let them "do much more" than they are doing now.