El Corte Inglés, Acciona and Grupo Santander Join Vaccination Race
The race to reach the all important threshold of the 70% vaccination rate, has speeded up with the annoucement today of seven new mass Covid vaccination hubs across Madrid including three by some of Spains largest companies.
Retail giant, El Corte Inglés, construction and engineering conglomerate, Acciona and banking group Santander will all start to offer the COVID-19 vaccination this Wednesday, 7th July.
The companies will first be vaccinating their employees before opening up their headquarters for the general public.
Te Acciona headquarters in Avenida de Europa, Alcobendas , El Corte Ingles in Arapiles and Santander in their campus headquerters in Boadilla del Monte are all finalising their facilities for this week´s start.
The three private sector vaccination hubs will operated by Madrid medical teams and volunteers drawn from the companies.
In addition the Madrid regional health authorities have added four more district medical centres in Moratalaz, Villaverde, Leganés y Móstoles to be “self” vaccination centres and will receive those members of the public who have missed or have not been called for their slot.
This week the Madrid region will offering the “self” vaccination appointments for those aged 30 or over from this week.
The announcements come as the epidemiological situation shows an increase in the number of cases – especially so, in the unvaccinated younger population which is being hit by the latest Delta variant of the virus.
The variant which first appeared in India, is considered more aggressive and contagious than previous strains and is expected to be the dorminant form of the coronavirus in Spain within the next few months with possibly as much as 90% of cases.
The latest government Covid infection rate figures show that there are 134 cases per 100,000 inhabitants across the country, with wide regional variations still in place.
However for the 12 to 19 year old age group, the figure is 345 cases per 100,000 and among those aged 20 to 29, the infection rate is even higher at 367.
Madrid´s 92 per 100,000 is below the national average and less than half the infection rate in Cataluña.
The latest figures from the goverments vaccination programme show that Spain has received 45,248,682 doses of Covid-19 vaccines, of which 42,027,584 have been administered and 17,990,526 people are now fully vaccinated, representing 37.9% of the population.
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