The Canaries need 100,000 doses a week to vaccinate 70% of population by October
The Canary Islands needs to receive at least 100,000 doses of Covid vaccines a week to meet the goal of having 70% of the population over 16 years old, vaccinated during the summer, or more specifically, by the end of September, or over 175,000 a week for them to reach their 25,000 a day capability.
This is something that seems impossible based on the doses received so far, which is a weekly average of about 29,500, unless the pharmaceutical companies triple the volume of doses sent, as they have been insistently announcing to the European health authorities that they are going to do.
"If we had enough vaccines, we could reach our desired objectives very soon," said Julio Pérez, spokesman for the Canarian Executive after the Government Council on Wednesday, who insisted that the Canary Islands Health Service is capable of inoculating between 25,000 and 30,000 people daily.
For now though, the SCS set a new record in its vaccination campaign against administering 12,760 doses on Wednesday, a milestone that could easily be surpassed if the pharmaceutical companies fulfilled their commitment to increase the shipments of vaccines from the middle of April.
However, until now, non-compliance and delays in remittances have marked a vaccination process slowed down also by the suspension of vaccination with AstraZeneca for ten days until the European Medicines Agency guaranteed its safety.
The president of the Spanish Society of Vaccination, Amós García, recognized a few days ago that the effects of the vaccine would not be appreciated in the face of a probable fourth wave caused by Easter. "Vaccination coverage is very low, because the number of vaccines is very low," he admitted.
The general director of Public Health of the Government of the Canary Islands, José Juan Alemán, is not very optimistic either, who, in statements to Medical journals, pointed out that with the vaccination rate in mid-February, at about 8,000 daily vaccinations, the immunity of the population will not be reached until the end of the year.
According to the Ministry of Health, since the beginning of the vaccination campaign, the Canary Islands have received 366,700 doses of the three vaccines against Covid; 232,800 from Pfizer, 35,800 from Moderna and 98,100 from AstraZeneca, a figure which the 45,100 received yesterday needs to be added to.
As of Thursday, Health had inoculated 313,951 doses of the three vaccines. This has made it possible to immunize 109,374 people with the complete schedule, that is, 8.11% of the target population, made up of 1,348,856 people, already have the two doses, also another 95,203 had received their first dose.
Therefore, the Canary health authorities face the challenge of vaccinating 1,239,432 people, who would need 2,383,761 doses. This figure may be lightened as the archipelago receives single-dose vaccines from Janssen, which will supposedly arrive in Spain on April 19th and of which 5.5 million doses are expected for the whole of Spain until the end of the year.
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The good news is that the vaccinations are advancing quickly in the most vulnerable population. Groups 1 and 2, of workers and residents in social health centres and SCS personnel, have already been fully vaccinated, while group 4 (large dependents) are 78% immunized with the two doses, and 5, of older than 80 years, 98.2% with one dose and 28.8% with two.
Low level of rejection:
26% of group 6, which consists of essential personnel such as security officers and teachers, have received their first dose of AstraZeneca, which is also administered to group 8, people between 56 and 65 years old. After the resumption of the inoculation of the drug, on March 24th, only 1% of those called for vaccination have refused to be inoculated with it.