Last weekend the Ministry of Health closed the vaccination point at the Hospital del Sur in Mojon in the south of Tenerife, leaving many people bewildered as to why because their appointments for their second dose of the vaccine has been moved to a different place.
The Ministry has explained that the simple reason as to why this happened is that the nurses who were doing the inoculations were from Hospital de La Candelaria in the north and they need them back at that hospital due to the increase in admissions due to coronavirus, and although any existing appointments are in various centres to administer them in time, any new ones will be in the South at other locations.
This means that the people who had planned to go to their vaccination appointment at Mojon, have either been reassigned to the Magma centre down the road in Adeje, or the unluckier ones to the Santiago Martín Pavilion in on the TF-5 motorway by La Laguna, more than 70 kilometres away.
Not only are residents of the south upset, but the mayor of Arona, José Julián Mena, has also made his discomfort public. "This decision was made public by surprise without any prior notice on Sunday, forcing hundreds of people from Arona to be diverted to the north, dozens of kilometres from their homes.”
Mena was unusually vocal about this and posted a video on his social media showing the overload in Magma, leading a large number of people to stand in line under the sun in the intense heat the island is suffering. "Once again, the South has suffered, with a vaccination point at the Hospital de El Mojón closed during an increase in cases of the Covid-19 pandemic," put Mena.
"If we ask our residents for responsibility” he added “we need to set an example and improve care and the vaccination system, which is essential to reactivate tourism, commerce, and hotels on our island. I don't usually use this tone,” he adds, “but please, the South Region is a metropolitan area. We need PLANNING, attention to our citizens. Hopefully no screening points will be removed in the next few days. Thank you all”, he concludes.
