ARCHIVED - Spain will consider Covid booster shot once evidence supports third jab
The Spanish government's priority at the moment is to roll-out jabs to 70 per cent of population by the end of August.
Spain's Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, has revealed the department's next challenge will be to provide a booster vaccine and to extend the immunisation to children aged between six and 12-years-old - but only once there is adequate supporting scientific evidence, and not until 70 per cent of the population has received both doses.
During the inauguration of a summer course 'Vaccines and Vaccination in Times of Covid-19' at the Complutense University of Madrid on Monday, Darias assured that by the end of this week, half of the population in Spain will be fully immunised - 23.7 million people - and 25 million people will have dates for their second doses.
She insisted that the priority remains to vaccinate 70 per cent of the country before the end of August, and to continue putting "special emphasis on younger people and adolescents" - essential in light of new data which shows that three per cent of young adults have caught Covid in the last fortnight in parts of Spain.
And the health minister added that "when scientific evidence advances", the government will look into the possibility of extending the vaccination to young children, as well as providing booster doses for those who have received both jabs, or the single Janssen vaccine.
While those who have been vaccinated are less likely to become infected with Covid, or if they do the symptoms are less severe, evidence is emerging that existing vaccines may not offer sufficient protection against new variants of SARS-CoV-2, such as the Delta variant, which accounts for at least 43 per cent of new Covid cases in Spain.
And for this reason, some countries are looking into additional protection. Israel has already started to offer booster shots of the Pfizer vaccine to the most at risk adults, and the US is in talks with the same manufacturer about introducing these shots for the most vulnerable.
Meanwhile, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is currently evaluating the safety data presented by the companies Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna on a third dose against coronavirus.
IMAGE: Archive