The Health Minister of Spain, Carolina Darias, announced that the government would approve a fourth COVID-19 dose in the Autumn, prioritising the most vulnerable group on Thursday.
Health Minister, Darias said that “there will be a fourth dose for the entire population. The Public Health Commission has decided this; probably, a date that can be considered is around Autumn because we are waiting for the arrival of new vaccines adapted to variants, as it is in the contracts that we have signed through the European Union with pharmaceutical companies.”
The new vaccination will start with the elderly and people living in retirement homes before progressing to lower age groups, health sources asserted in an interview.
Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, Spain has recorded around 107,000 COVID-19-related deaths, according to official figures.
In February 2022, Amnesty International denounced the “poor performance” of the Spanish Public Prosecutor’s Office in clarifying over 35,000 deaths of elderly people in nursing homes during the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak in March-April 2020.
Most of these “COVID-19 files” have been closed without the testimony of relatives of the victims or without any vital information which could provide information for future investigations, thus leaving ample room for “impunity,” the Spanish branch of the NGO stated.
