The Ministry of Health plans to start vaccination today of front-line health personnel in the Canary Islands who are in charge of caring for Covid-19 patients, which makes up group II of the National Vaccination Strategy which establishes the order of priority of the population groups to be immunized.
Although this has already started in Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and La Palma, the Ministry wants to increase the rate of vaccination and for this they have trained almost 700 nurses from the Canary Islands Health Service to carry out vaccination of Primary and Specialized Care, of which 550 will be responsible for vaccination of Primary Care, who in turn will train their teams in the Health Centres, and the rest are from the Specialized and Hospital areas.
The Government said yesterday that "the rate of vaccination must be increased", and, despite the fact that from the outside, the Ministry of Health says it is "positive" that 68% of the target population has already been immunized in the first phase, some 12,000 vaccines, the Executive wants more, given the predicted impact of new cases expected over the next few weeks to the Christmas holidays.
“We are expecting to have some very difficult days. Now more than ever it is necessary to comply with the health recommendations", stated Amós García on his Twitter account, in which he acknowledged days ago that with the current rate of vaccination it will be difficult to reach the end of summer with 70% of the population vaccinated.”
There will of course be a natural increase in vaccinations as the islands receive more than just the Pfizer vaccine. The first delivery of the Moderna vaccine is due next week which will help ‘ramp up’ inoculations, as supply is one of the issues.
EMA scientists also advised at the weekend, that it is possible to get six doses out of one Pfizer vial as opposed to the recommended five. This would see a 20% increase over recommendations, if nurses administering the vaccine can do so without spilling a drop, as it must be six from one vial, remnants from others cannot be mixed to make up doses.
During this weekend, vaccination in the different Islands have continued to meet Thursdays deadline of inoculating residents and personnel who work in the social health centres. Just yesterday, the nursing teams in charge of inoculating the doses of the Pfizer vaccines visited the social health centres of Buenavista, Los Silos, El Tanque, Garachico, Icod, San Juan de La Rambla and La Guancha.
In Gran Canaria they have also been immunized in the social health centres of Agüimes, Ingenio, Arucas, San Bartolomé and Santa Lucía de Tirajana and the capital, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
