ARCHIVED - Spain authorizes Pfizer substitute for second AstraZeneca Covid vaccine dose

The door is left open for individuals to opt for the second AstraZeneca jab if they prefer

After a lengthy period of clinical trials and evaluation Spain’s national Public Health Committee decided on Tuesday evening to authorize the administration of a dose of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine for a large swathe of the population, namely those aged under 60 who received their first Oxford AstraZeneca dose before concerns over blood clotting led to the Oxford product being designated only for those aged between 60 and 70.

However, the hundreds of thousands of people who find themselves in that situation will also be allowed to choose a second AstraZeneca jab rather than combining the two vaccines if they prefer to do so. By the time the decision was made to limit the AstraZeneca to those aged between 60 and 69 approximately two million doses of the product had been injected in this country, and since then the recipients have been awaiting the decision over how their immunization procedure will be completed.

With the AstraZeneca product still being used in the over-60s, the latest government data report that over 4.8 million doses have been administered but that only 560 people have so far received both doses.

Other EU countries have already taken contrasting decisions - Italy recommends a second dose of AstraZeneca, while in France the policy is to complete the vaccination with a dose of Pfizer – but in Spain the outcome has taken longer while clinical tests have been performed at the Carlos III health institute in Madrid. However, there is a suspicion that the Spanish policy has also been influenced to a certain extent by the fact that the EU has ordered far more doses of vaccine from Pfizer than from AstraZeneca and Janssen, whose contracts are not to be renewed in 2022 and 2023.

The meeting of the Public Health Committee on Tuesday was a tense one, and representatives from numerous regions, including Madrid, Andalucía, Catalunya, Murcia, Galicia, Castilla y León and the Comunidad Valenciana, backed the second Astra Zeneca dose. They point to the decreased risk in the second dose of AstraZeneca, which entails the estimated frequency of associated clotting dropping from one in 100,000 to one in a million.