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VACCINE

Spain set to vaccinate all nursing home residents with first dose by weekend

Spain is on target to administer first dose of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine to all elderly nursing-home residents across Spain by the end of the weekend.

Published: 12 January 2021 16:36 CET
Spain set to vaccinate all nursing home residents with first dose by weekend
Photos: AFP

Health Minister Salvador Illa announced the aim after Tuesday’s cabinet meeting insisting that the goal to protect those most vulnerable to the coronavirus would be met.

“We believe this week Spain will reach cruising speed in its vaccination plan,” Illa said.

“This weekend we continued vaccinating in many places, despite Storm Filomena,” he added.

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Spain’s vaccination plan got off to a slow start after launching on December 27th  but it has picked up and Health Ministry data shows 54.6 percent of available doses – 406,091 out of 743,925 – have already been administered across Spain.

The efficacy of the vaccination programme differs across Spain’s 17 autonomous regions where regional health authorities are in charge of administering injections once they have been distributed by the central government.

Madrid is lagging behind with only 25 percent of the available doses given, while Galicia has already used over 80 percent of their allotted doses.

This chart produced by Spain’s Health Ministry shows a breakdown of all doses given across the regions:

From next week, health authorities will begin administering the second round of the double-dose Pfizer-BioNTech jab to the earliest recipients of the first shot before embarking on vaccination of the next priority group.

On Tuesday morning Spain took delivery of Moderna’s recently-approved vaccine under a plan that will see a total of 600,000 doses in Spain by the third week of February.

The latest data showed a surge in coronavirus infections over the weekend blamed on a loosening of restrictions over Christmas to allow people to meet up with their families.

 

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COVID-19

Public Health Agency recommends two Covid doses next year for elderly

Sweden's Public Health Agency is recommending that those above the age of 80 should receive two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine a year, once in the spring and once in the autumn, as it shifts towards a longer-term strategy for the virus.

Published: 23 December 2022 10:53 CET
Public Health Agency recommends two Covid doses next year for elderly

In a new recommendation, the agency said that those living in elderly care centres, and those above the age of 80 should from March 1st receive two vaccinations a year, with a six month gap between doses. 

“Elderly people develop a somewhat worse immune defence after vaccination and immunity wanes faster than among young and healthy people,” the agency said. “That means that elderly people have a greater need of booster doses than younger ones. The Swedish Public Health Agency considers, based on the current knowledge, that it will be important even going into the future to have booster doses for the elderly and people in risk groups.” 

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People between the ages of 65 and 79 years old and young people with risk factors, such as obesity, diabetes, poor kidney function or high blood pressure, are recommended to take one additional dose per year.

The new vaccination recommendation, which will start to apply from March 1st next year, is only for 2023, Johanna Rubin, the investigator in the agency’s vaccination programme unit, explained. 

She said too much was still unclear about how long protection from vaccination lasted to institute a permanent programme.

“This recommendation applies to 2023. There is not really an abundance of data on how long protection lasts after a booster dose, of course, but this is what we can say for now,” she told the TT newswire. 

It was likely, however, that elderly people would end up being given an annual dose to protect them from any new variants, as has long been the case with influenza.

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