Vaccination of children aged 5 to 11 to begin on December 15

Vaccination against covid for children aged 5 to 11 will start on Wednesday, December 15. The Public Health Commission, which brings together the Spanish Ministry of Health and the Health Departments of different regions, has approved this Tuesday to extend the immunization campaign next week, a couple of days after the arrival of the first 1.3 million doses of Pfizer's pediatric vaccine, the only one authorized by the European regulatory agencies, which is scheduled to land next Monday, December 13. Ministry of Health sources estimate that there are 3.3 million children of this age in Spain, although vaccination is not mandatory.

The Spanish Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, said that, as always, each region will decide how to deploy their vaccination strategy, i.e., where vaccines will be administered and in what order (by age groups, for example). At the moment, children under 12 have the highest cumulative incidence at 14 days: at state level, 412 cases were detected for every 100,000 inhabitants (compared to 248 on average at all ages). In Catalonia the figure has soared to 594 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

However, Darias did not want to clarify whether or not the State is in favour of injecting doses in schools, as proposed by some regional governments and as is already done with other vaccines to facilitate logistics, or if they will be administered in health centres or mass vaccination points as with the rest of the population.