Third Shot Mulled As Spain Covid Rate Continues Riding The Wave
The latest coronavirus official infection figures released by the Spanish Ministry of Health show a continuing surge in the number of cases.
The official rate confirmed on Friday 23rd July, now stands at 677 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
A week earlier the rate was 537 cases per 100,000 of population.
The cause of the rise is the spread of the far more contageous Delta variant, which was first detected in India at the start of the year and now accounts for over 80% of all cases recorded.
In the Madrid region the figure is 88%.
The variant is particularly seen in the younger under 29s population group, many of whom have yet to be vaccinated.
Broken down by age group the infection rates per 100,000 of population are:
- Under 11s – 465
- 12-19 – 1,623
- 20-29 – 1,888
- 30-39 – 891
- 40-49 – 441
- 50-59 – 296
- 60-69 – 290
- 70-79 – 147
- Over 80s – 201
In the figures released by the Madrid regional health authorities the numbers for Saturday 24th July show another 4,779 cases, 175 of whom required hospitalisation and a further 8 people are confirmed to have died from the coronavirus over the previous 24 hours.
The government´s vaccine rollout is now focusing on the younger population groups and remains confident of reaching the all important 70% herd immunity threshold by the end of August.
To date, Spain has received 55,930,113 doses of Covid-19 vaccines, of which 53,930,113 have been administered.
30,500,003 people have now received at least one jab, representing 64.3% of the total population and 25,398,978 are now fully vaccinated, representing 53.5% of the total population.
However, the Spanish Health Minister, Carolina Darias said in an interview on Friday 23rd July, that “everything is pointing to” the need for a third dose of Covid-19 vaccines to be administered to the population, given the new variants of the coronavirus that could reduce the protection already being offered by the existing medication”.
She stressed that the government´s objective is to “continue vaccinating everyone until reaching 100% of the population.”
To date, Spain has recorded 4,280,429 Covid-19 cases of which 81,221 have been fatal.
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