The Ministry of Health of the Canary Islands is asking anyone between the ages of 66 and 69 years old who have not yet received a call or SMS for their vaccination to make an appointment by calling 012.
This new facility for appointments starts today to try and speed up the vaccination process in the Canary Islands. Initially, they have appealed to people born between 1952 and 1955 who have not yet been called to be immunized with the AstraZeneca formula.
Those who have already received their first dose will have to wait to be called by the Canary Islands Health Service for their second one.
This third way for the appointment, which is added to telephone calls and SMS messages, is aimed especially at those who live in Tenerife and Gran Canaria, the territories with the most population and with a lower percentage of immunized people, since in the rest of the archipelago, where vaccination is more advanced, the warning system from the health centres is working more efficiently on a smaller population.
Health personnel of the two capital islands are encountering more problems when it comes to locating people over 60 years of age who are currently being vaccinated because, among other reasons, they have not updated contact details. To make it easier to contact them, the Ministry of Health will communicate which group of people by age should call at any particular time.
According to latest data, 49.5% of the 284,983 people over 60 years of age in the Canary Islands have already received at least one dose of one of the three available vaccines against Covid. The AstraZeneca vaccine is being incoculated to those between 60 and 69 years old, and those of Pfizer and Moderna to the rest of the population of group 5 of the vaccination plan.
Among the elderly, the age group 70 to 79 is the one that lags behind the most. At first, the Janssen single-dose vaccine was going to be aimed at this age group, but the first batch of doses for the autonomous communities has been delayed by the Ministry of Health, waiting for the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to once again guarantee its safety after the decision of the United States to stop using it. The forecast is that later this month it will be delivered.
However, the Canarian Government maintains its plans that by the end of August 70% of the target population will be immunized, ie, adults over 16 years old. Yesterday the SCS set a new record of daily vaccinations with 18,418 in one day, of which 12,120 were from Pfizer, 636 from Moderna and 5,662 were from AstraZeneca.
