The Ministry of Health has activated the new mass vaccination centre in the Santiago Martín pavilion in La Laguna in the north of Tenerife, which will have the capacity to jab between 12,000 and 14,000 people per day. On its opening day yesterday, 300 people cited by SMS were inoculated, the majority of them in the group between 30 and 39 years of age.
The authorities said they appreciate the efforts of the health personnel who are vaccinating. The president of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres commented that “there are a thousand ways to have fun on a Sunday, but I thank you for coming to work voluntarily, I know that some 270 people have signed up, thank you very much on behalf of all of you.”
The president of the Cabildo, Pedro Martín said that “we bend the curve and change the situation to lower infections on the island. I believe that this will be a very important place in the next few weeks, the first that will be able to vaccinate 24 hours a day”.
Torres transmitted a clear message to the public, "the objective is to vaccinate, and the more people are vaccinated, the more resistant we will be to the virus and the fewer infections will occur. In the meantime we must continue fighting against the virus, we have not won the game, we have not won, and the war is not over, there are still key weeks".
"We have had to make tough decisions before in Tenerife and Gran Canaria and, at the moment, the objective is to bend the curve, to stop the number of infections".
He reminded that the Canary Islands proposed "to administer more than 30,000 doses a day, and we have exceeded that number, and this space is prepared to administer 12,000 doses a day, with the aim of reaching 70% of the population immunized before the end of July".
To those who criticize that more vaccines are given on one island than another, Torres insisted that: "This is not true. 676,000 vaccines have been administered in Tenerife and 677,000 in Gran Canaria, but Tenerife has 50,000 more people under 45 years of age, therefore, Gran Canaria has a population that was vaccinated earlier by age group.”
Pedro Martín pointed out that, “even if we ask for caution and keep our distance from each other, that is not enough. To bend the curve we need to vaccinate. We are confident that next month will be the month of definitive change”.
The SCS reminds people to go to their website to register for their vaccination, and if they are not in the health service, to go to their local health centre and register with them as soon as possible.
