Pfizer doses arrive in Catalonia to guarantee the first vaccine to those over 80 years of age
Only 27% of the population in this age group has been vaccinated with both doses
BarcelonaThe 193,050 doses of the Pfizer vaccine against covid-19 that arrived in Catalonia on Monday, as planned, will be used to advance the administration of the first dose to those over 80 years of age. Until now 64% of the population of this age had received it and only 27% already have the second dose. The Department of Health calculates that in a few days all this priority population will have the first dose administered and will be able to concentrate on the second once the three required weeks are over. In parallel, this will allow, from 12 April, to start giving first doses to people between 70 and 79 years of age, although the pace will depend precisely on the second doses to those over 80 years of age, which cannot be postponed.
![A health worker giving the first dose to a woman this Sunday at the University of Barcelona.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 16 9"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
As for the 66-69 age group, who are still awaiting vaccination, they are candidates "to be vaccinated with Janssen", according to the Secretary General of Health, Marc Ramentol. In an interview on Catalunya Ràdio, he added that they still expect to have "70% of the population vaccinated by the end of August" if the arrival of vaccines is as agreed. The Janssen doses, which the Generalitat is due to start receiving this April, are a key element in scaling up the vaccination campaign and speeding it up.
For people aged 60 to 65, who have begun to receive doses of AstraZeneca just over a week ago, the arrival of a new shipment this Friday has meant reopening the agenda to schedule vaccinations. Yesterday there were still 4,000 free appointments that can be booked via the website vacunacovidsalut.cat. 30% of the population of this age has already received the first dose and, in this case, the second will not start until after 12 weeks.
Catalonia exceeded on Sunday the first million doses of the vaccine and the figure now stands at 1,022,501 (+11,627 in the last 24 hours). As for the second dose, it has been administered to 443,580 people (+3). Thus, 13.2% of the population has received the first dose - 15.6% if we take into account those over 16 years of age - and 5.8% have received the full course.
