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Spain has achieved the main goal that governments around the world have set themselves to fight the coronavirus pandemic: to fully immunize 70% of its population. The country should have crossed this barrier on Tuesday, even if it will not appear in the daily balance sheet of the campaign until Wednesday, given that these data relate to the day before.
According to the figures available, Spain ended Monday with less than 200,000 people fully vaccinated before reaching the target, while the forecast – based on the first doses given in recent weeks and the speed of the campaign in recent days – suggest about 300,000 full doses will have been completed by Tuesday.
This represents a total of 33.24 million citizens enjoying the full protection offered by the vaccines used in Spain: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Janssen and Oxford-AstraZeneca. This is an unprecedented effort by the country’s central and regional health systems, and a campaign that has been one of the most successful in the world. With 47.5 million inhabitants, Spain is the 27th most populous country in the world. No other nation with a similar or higher population count has managed to vaccinate people against Covid-19 so quickly, according to information from the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data website. The only other country to come close is Canada, with 67%. Next is the 60th most populous country, Chile, if you want to find a nation of over 10 million that has a similar percentage of the population with protection from Covid-19. And from there to the 83rd state on the list, Portugal, to find a country of this size with a greater percentage of protected residents (73%).
All of the other countries that have reached this milestone have much smaller populations, such as Denmark, Uruguay, Iceland, and Malta. The countries closest to the comparison, for their part, such as Italy, France and Germany, have barely managed to fully immunize 60% of their populations. The countries which started to vaccinate much earlier, thanks to their agreements with the pharmaceutical companies – the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel – are moving more slowly due to the reluctance of part of their population to be vaccinated.
“Spain started with certain advantages over neighboring countries, such as greater confidence in the health system and better acceptance of vaccines,” explains sociologist Josep Lobera, professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and one of the experts who week after week designed and adapted the immunization strategy based on an advisory board from the Ministry of Health.
The greater confidence of the Spaniards in the health system and vaccines has its roots in the Franco dictatorship, when polio continued to affect children while in the north of the Pyrenees, the disease had already diminished. “This delay compared to other countries and the importance of public health is a generational reminder that endures among our elders,” explains Lobera.
This starting position, however, does not always guarantee good results. “This is something we have to watch out for, because we are facing very dynamic processes where a number of factors intertwine and have a snowball effect,” Lobera continues. “If you have any doubts but your friends and family get vaccinated, in the end you will. And vice versa. It is true that we have a good cover for [vaccination among] children, but initial reluctance to coronavirus injections was high. We must prevent this from becoming an object of political confrontation, because it increases reluctance. We must also highlight solidarity, because by being vaccinated we protect ourselves, but also we protect the most vulnerable. This leads some people to take the step for their elders or for society, ”adds Lobera.
Experts, however, insist there is still work to be done – there are still more than five million people in Spain who have yet to be vaccinated, and a third dose of the vaccine may be needed to fight the spread of the disease. more contagious delta variant. There can be no assurance that this initial success will be repeated. The emergence of the delta strain, first identified in India, means that vaccinating 70% of the population will not be enough to achieve herd immunity. Experts are now divided between those who think it will be impossible to achieve such a situation and those who believe that it may be possible if vaccination coverage exceeds 85%.
Miguel Hernán, professor of epidemiology at Harvard University, believes that Spain has benefited from two factors: “A quality health system and the absence of relevant anti-vaccine movements. If you look at the curves in Israel, UK, and Israel, they are very similar in the first phase. It is true that they start to increase at different months, but this was due to the availability of vaccines in each country. This initial capacity comes from a good health system, and the three countries are similar in this regard, and are able to set up an effective vaccination campaign.
Over the weeks, however, the scenario started to change. “In Israel, from the end of February or the beginning of March, the curve started to flatten due to the rejection of vaccines, mainly for religious reasons. UK, [vaccine] the reluctance is due to other reasons, but it exists, and the same thing happened a few weeks later. Fortunately, in Spain this is not the case, ”adds Hernán.
In recent weeks, Spain has seen pockets of the population where the vaccination campaign is barely advancing – albeit in much smaller numbers. This is particularly the case among 30-69 year olds (it is not possible to detect such a phenomenon among young people given that the campaign is still progressing for these younger age groups). An approximation accepted by experts and taking into account the fact that no vaccine has yet been approved for children under 12 (11% of the population) indicates that vaccine hesitation exists between two and three million people (up to ‘to 6% of the population).
However, this is a very heterogeneous group, which includes those who are openly anti-vaccine, those who have doubts about its safety and others who are apathetic. “Those who openly oppose vaccines and will not be displaced are very few [in Spain], even if they are now making a lot of noise on social networks, ”explains sociologist Mar Griera, researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). “It’s a gray-dominated space, with critical positions that don’t necessarily always lead to rejection.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, she explains, these positions were mostly defended by middle-class people who supported alternative therapies and criticized conventional medicine. “It’s a group that uses social networks, but prefers to work in other environments. Public debate has been minimal. This has changed in recent months, with the emergence of much more active profiles linked to the far right. The two groups are still separated, although they may coincide at particular times, such as when it comes to criticizing the use of masks in schools, ”adds Griera, referring to plans to continue demanding face coverings for pupils over six years old in Spanish teaching centers during the next academic year.
This mistrust of Covid-19 vaccines has greatly complicated the conduct of campaigns in other countries. In France, Germany, Italy and the UK, such suspicions saw children’s coverage collapse and also became a public health problem that allowed diseases like measles to re-emerge.
The Italian government, which blames the holiday season for the slowness of its campaign, reports that 60% of its population has full vaccine coverage against Covid-19. France, one of the countries most reluctant to vaccinate, says it has inoculated 65% (although Our World in Data puts the figure at 59%). The process in the neighboring country has seen controversy, ranging from a slow start to times of tension this summer, with protests over the need to use a vaccination passport to enjoy social activities like going to a restaurant or the theater. .
Germany has also reached just over 60% coverage and is looking for ways to increase that percentage, including a train that has been running through Berlin since Monday carrying medical personnel offering the single-dose Janssen vaccine. In the UK on August 10, Prime Minister Boris Johnson celebrated the milestone of having fully immunized three in four adults, but in terms of the total population that number drops to 65%, according to Our World in Data.
The United States, Israel and the United Kingdom started their vaccination campaigns first. But in the first, the pace of the campaign has been slowing for months and has barely covered 52% of the population. Miguel Hernán attributes this to a number of factors, such as the influence of the Republican Party, which “implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, supports people who do not get vaccinated”. The Delta variant has swept through Republican states like Texas and Florida, where protective measures are virtually non-existent. The pace has been much higher in Canada, where 67.5% of the population is vaccinated.
Religious reasons and the youth of the population served to slow down the campaign in Israel. It was one of the first countries in the world to launch its campaign and by March it had already vaccinated half of its population. But since then he has only managed to increase that figure to 62%. Almost a quarter of Israelis are under 12, and 12% of those over that age – especially those of Palestinian descent and ultra-Orthodox Jews – have refused to be vaccinated.
In Latin America, the differences between countries are huge. Uruguay, with 72% of the population vaccinated, is among the most advanced in the world, while Mexico has barely managed to vaccinate 33 million of its 126 million inhabitants (26%). In this case, the logistical difficulties and the weakening of the health system combined with delays in supply, so many doses were sent to the rich countries.
In Asia, only three small rich states have passed the 70% mark: Singapore, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. China is at 62%, Japan is just under half the population, and South Korea is just past 30%. The average on the continent is 29%, a figure below 3% in Africa.
LATEST FIGURES
Spain’s health ministry reported 7,767 new coronavirus infections on Tuesday and added 194 victims to the total death toll. This is the highest daily number of deaths from Covid-19 reported to date during this fifth wave of the virus in Spain. The 14-day cumulative number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 population, meanwhile, fell another eight points, according to yesterday’s report, and now stands at 233.75.
In terms of hospital occupancy, 6,806 Covid-19 patients are currently being treated, or 308 less than the day before. The pressure on the country’s intensive care units (ICUs) is also slowly easing, with 17.39% of beds occupied by Covid-19 patients compared to 18.04% the day before. In total, there have been 4,855,065 confirmed coronavirus infections in Spain since the start of the pandemic, and 84,340 official victims.
With a report of Silvia Ayuso, Inma Bonet, Rafa de Miguel, Antonia Laborde, Carmen Morán, Lorena Pacho, Juan Carlos Sanz and Elena G. Sevillano.
english version by Simon Hunter.
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