Catalonia will start on Tuesday, September 26, the flu and covid vaccination campaign for the vulnerable population, a segment in which for the first time smokers, teachers and children between 6 months and 5 years are included, urged to inoculate- it’s against the flu. The Minister of Health, Manel Balcells, expressed the objective of immunizing 75% of citizens over 60 years of age. The two vaccines will be administered simultaneously and will begin with the most vulnerable population: users of the 985 residences and people receiving home care.
Subsequently, on October 16, the mass vaccination campaign will begin for those over 60, health and social care professionals and people with risk pathologies.
Salut has acquired a total of 1,715,000 flu shots, 145,000 more than two years ago and 110,000 more than last year, to deal with the new vaccine groups. Despite the fact that there are 1.6 million smokers in Catalonia, Carmen Cabezas, Secretary of Public Health, thinks that there are not many who will decide to get vaccinated. “Explaining and convincing takes time”, he argued. On the other hand, Salut estimates that between 40% and 50% of susceptible children (around 300,000) will get the flu shot. It will be administered intramuscularly in all cases, except for 3,000, who will receive the new intranasal vaccine, as part of a Health pilot test, to check its effectiveness.
Catalonia is the only community that has decided to include teachers in the flu target, as they consider that “they are in close contact with children and the vaccine helps to preserve the school environment”, according to Cabezas. In Spain, 50,000 cases of childhood flu are registered annually, of which 4,000 require hospitalization.
Vaccines against covid adapt to new variants. The one that circulates the most is the EG.5, on which the vaccine increases antibodies up to 7 times. According to Cabezas, almost 98% of the population has had contact with the virus or with immunogens, so the anticovid strategy has become normalized until it is treated in a similar way to the flu. The few people who have had reactions (mainly myocarditis) to mRNA vaccines will receive Hipra’s protein vaccine.
