Spain celebrates today, December 27, 2022, two years since the start of the successful vaccination campaign against COVID-19 which, in this period, has reached a total of 39,279,291 people in our country, 93.1% of the population over the age of 12. 104,045,019 doses have been administered so far.
The number of people with a full regimen amounts to 39,202,284 people, which is 92.9% of the population over the age of 12. The campaign began on December 27, 2020 at the “Los Olmos” elderly residence in Guadalajara. Araceli Rosario Hidalgo, an intern in that residence since 2013, born in 1924, was the first person to receive the vaccine in Spain.
At the same time, the dose was inoculated to Mónica Tapias, born in 1972, nursing assistant (TCAE). The vaccination strategy in Spain has been guided by the priority of the most vulnerable people. Thus we started with the guests and the staff of the centers for the elderly, the front-line health and social-health personnel, the large non-institutionalized employees.
It was later extended to the rest of the population by age group. The Second Dose Souvenir Vaccination Campaign against COVID-19 is currently underway, with vaccines adapted to the new variants, to continue protecting citizens.
This campaign started on September 26 and there are already 72.6% of people over 80 and 54.9% of people over 60 with reminder doses adapted to the variants. In this sense, the Ministry of Health asks to continue vaccinating the most vulnerable people with a second booster dose to continue to protect us and save lives.
Challenge
The vaccination campaign in our country was a real challenge, met with great success, for the National Health System (SNS), as recognized nationally and internationally. Spain’s leadership in vaccination has been made clear with milestones such as being the first country to vaccinate 100% of its population over the age of 80.
In addition, Spain has made 70 million doses available to third countries, ranking among the 10 countries in the world with the highest effective donation through the COVAX mechanism, to which another 20 million will be added adapted to the variants against COVID-19.
