Teenagers in Spain will start the 2021/2022 academic year at least partially immunized, as the Minister of Education, Isabel Celáa, revealed this morning (Thursday) that students between 12 and 15 years old will begin to be vaccinated in the first week of September, just before the start of term, and when the previous age groups have received at least their first jab.
The approximately two million children included in this age range will be inoculated exclusively with Pfizer, the Minister announced today, which is the only one of the four vaccines that has the approval of the EMA at the moment for over 12-year-olds.
Celaá couldn’t clarify any more details about the situation today, apart from the fact it will take several weeks because the obligation to use Pfizer will mean a second jab 21 days after the first one.
According to the Ministry of Health, there are still several meetings pending between the teams of Celaá, Darias, and the representatives of the autonomous communities, to decide if the inoculations will be carried out in the schools themselves to avoid disruption of classes and inconvenience to parents, or if it is better to opt for large vaccination centres or hospitals, where there are much better logistics already in place, and which have been shown to be very effective in absorbing large volumes of inoculations.
GROUPS UPDATED IN VACCINATION PLAN:
Last Tuesday, the Public Health Commission approved the eighth update of the vaccination strategy, in which vaccination against Covid was authorized up to 12 years of age. That document created three new age groups for vaccination:
Group 11: People between 30 and 39 years old
Group 12: People between 20 and 29 years old
Group 13: People between 12 and 19 years old.
Before the hundreds of thousands of teenage students are inoculated in September, there will be a small group from the age of 12 who will be vaccinated first. According to the new update of the immunization plan, priority must be given to the vaccination of adolescents from 12 years of age who belong to groups 1, 4 and 7 (highly dependent or with very high-risk conditions), after the approval of priority immunization for this age group on May 31st.
