Spain Heading To Herd Immunity By The Summer

The Spanish Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, said yesterday, Sunday 13th December that “if everything goes well”  70 per cent of Spain’s population will be vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of next summer.

He said that”probably, at the end of the summer, 70% of the population will be vaccinated. And this will be a lot, although it will not be the end of the pandemic because this will occur when we have immunised a high percentage of the world’s population, and this will take all of the year 2021 and part of 2022, according to the experts.”

With such a high proportion of the population immunised against the virus, the effect will provide an additional natural herd immunity as the virus will no longer be able to spread in the population.

Earlier the Health Ministry´s Covid Task Force Co-Ordinator (CCAES), Fernando Simón, said that Spain is now in a “downward phase,” with the latest 14-day cumulative case rate falling further to 189 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, which is the lowest figure since August.

He underlined that this was due to the health and hygene protocols in place, as well as the numerous restrictions, including those of citizen movement and curfews which are still prevailent in all of Spain´s 17 autonomous communities.

The Health Ministry´s goal is to lower the 14-day cumulative number of cases per 100,000 inhabitants to 50.

The government initial order of 20 million doses is being rolled out from January with vulnerable people and front line health workers receiving priority.

The minister believes that the restrictive measures currently in place across the country can be lifted “when there is a significant level of vaccinated population”, although he warned that “there is much that we still do not know about the immunity of vaccines and here we have to apply the precautionary principle.”

To date Spain has recorded 1,741,439 cases of whom 47,624 have died.

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