The Secretary of State for Spain, Juan González-Barba, confirmed yesterday that the Government will not give priority of delivery of vaccines to tourist areas, after the Balearic Islands requested access to more to speed up the vaccination process and reach the tourist season with as much of the population immunized as possible.
Barba, who is the EU representative said: "It is important from the European Union point of view that there is, so to speak, no competition as to who acquires more or less immunity depending on the economic activities they have," he declared after holding a meeting with the vice president and the Minister of Finance of the Balearic Islands Government, Juan Pedro Yllanes and Rosario Sánchez.
The Balearic Government want to have access to more vaccines to accelerate the campaign and reach the tourist season with most of the population immunized, as they don’t have a winter season, so if this summer is lost, another year is lost.
The Secretary of State stated that, "for now, the European plan, and therefore the Spanish plan, is to proceed in a homogeneous manner according to the health risk of different population groups, not economic groups.”
He also pointed out that it is necessary to understand that immunization above the average in a tourist region such as the Balearic Islands, would not have the effect that is sought if vaccination was not also high in the countries of origin of the visitors.
Barba has declared that, although further delays should not be ruled out, “everything possible will be done to ensure that the European forecasts are met” and that the majority of the population is vaccinated when summer arrives.
"We hope that the bottleneck that has existed due to global supply and demand will be solved in the next couple of weeks, and that the EU countries receive so many vaccines that their problem is to administer them with sufficient agility.”
He conclude by adding: "You can still get to the 70% percentage you want of citizens vaccinated in summer.”
