ARCHIVED - Gap between Pfizer and Moderna vaccine doses could be widened to 8 weeks in Spain
The Spanish government proposes another modification of vaccination policy
In another unexpected modification of the Spanish government’s guidelines regarding the coronavirus immunization procedure it has been proposed that the interval between the administration of the first and second doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines could be expanded to eight weeks, the intention being to vaccinate more people earlier with at least one dose and thus provide them with a certain degree of resistance to infection.
Until now the gaps between doses have been established at 21 days for the Pfizer product and 28 days for Moderna, and if the proposed alteration is approved it will apply only to people aged under 80 as the elderly remain a top priority for full immunization.
This policy of providing partial protection to a larger proportion of the population is similar to those which have been adopted by other countries in which the immunization campaign is further advanced than in Spain, including Israel and the UK. However, until now the Ministry of Health in this country has rejected calls for it to be made standard practice, and as recently as last week a request made by the regional governments of Madrid and Catalunya to extend the intervals to 42 days was rejected.
The reason cited at the time was that the increase in vaccine deliveries which is expected during the spring makes such a move unnecessary, but since then further reports have been completed and these appear to have changed the Ministry’s collective mind: projections anticipate that, with the “fourth wave” of infection still on the rise, the widening of the gap to 56 days will produce a reduction in infections of between 22 and 26 per cent, as well as between 26 and 31 per cent fewer admissions to hospital and over 30 per cent fewer fatalities.
The proposal will be debated during Tuesday in an extraordinary meeting of the Public Health Committee and is expected to be agreed and in the meantime the European Medicines Agency is scheduled to issue its ruling on the safety of the single-dose Janssen vaccine, the use of which was suspended just as it was about to begin when it emerged that six cases of blood clotting had been detected in relation to the 7 million doses already administered in the USA.