It was dawn on December 30, 2020. A special New Year’s Eve. The health teams of León Primary Care have launched a historic campaign. Vaccination against covid, Sars-Cov-2, the coronavirus, began nine months after a state of alarm for the pandemic was declared in Spain.
The vaccine of hope has begun to be provided in nursing homes. In one day, from half past seven in the morning to ten in the evening, 2,000 vaccines were administered. Two thousand people already had the first dose of immunity to covid.
Two years later, that burst of joy has turned into tranquility. The data supports the state of mind. Up to March 2021, the date on which immunity began to take effect in the first vaccinated people, a total of 496 deaths of people residing in centers for the elderly or with disabilities had been recorded and since then there have been 72, according to data extracted from the portal of Transparency of Castilla y León.
Only 12% of the deaths of those most vulnerable to covid have occurred since the vaccine began to take effect. “The vaccine was a ball of oxygen for us and there was no more mortality than we had in the residences,” admits Ana Rivero, vaccination manager at the primary care management of León.
In total, 570 people have died from confirmed covid —in hospitals or residential center— since March 2020. and another 190 have died with suspected covid. The periods of greatest mortality are from 13 March 2020 to 30 April 2020 and from 1 May 2020 to 21 June 2020. From 28 March 2022 to date, 16 deaths have been recorded in Leonese residences.
From March 15, 2021 to June 9, 2021, only one death of people residing in senior centers was recorded and he was in hospital. It is the most favorable period. Between 20 June and 13 October 2021, five deaths of users of these centers for the elderly or with disabilities were recorded. From 14 October 2021 to 27 March 2022, another 15 deaths were recorded.
“After the residences were vaccinated and entered the immunization period, covid was treated differently,” he points out. In February 2021, mass vaccination campaigns began for groups with greater exposure to the virus and therefore the elderly at the Palacio de Exposiciones, in the León area, and the El Toralín pavilion in Ponferrada. On September 30, 2021, León’s vaccination course ended after completing the two-dose cycle with a budget of over half a million vaccines. But it wasn’t over. In November, it reopened to vaccinate young people between the ages of 16 and 22, with the expectation of starting the third dose soon, as it happened. In October 2022 the fourth dose would arrive, the booster or booster dose in Anglo-Saxon terminology.
Nursing homes have been the ‘test bed’ for the immunization of the population. They have been the spearheads of all the decisions that have been made in the covid vaccination strategy. The generosity and courage of the elderly to put their arm in it is the mirror in which the population has looked at itself.
In León, 88% of the population is immunized with the complete cycle, taking into account that the smallest of the demographic pyramid, those under five years of age, have not been vaccinated.
Of the 397,255 people who have been vaccinated with the full course, a total of 108,437 already have the booster dose or fourth dose. They are 27.2% of the population immunized with the complete cycle and include 89% of people over 89 years of age; 73.6% of people aged between 80 and 89; 66.7% of those aged between 70 and 79; and 44.82% of people between 60 and 69 years old.
Figures that demonstrate that, once again, it is the elderly who have shown the greatest adherence to this vaccine. Among the under 60s, the memory dose is very low, partly because it has been open for less than a month and partly because of the feeling of immunity that has permeated the population after the massive campaigns.
Between 50 and 59 there are 11.1% of people vaccinated with the fourth dose; between 40 and 49 years they are 7.28%; between 30 and 39 years, 5.62%; between 20 and 29, 3.76%; between 13 and 19 years, 0.67% and between 5 and 12 years, 0.05%.
From the urgency to vaccinate in the early stages of immunization, we have moved on to a phase of normalization in this stage of vaccination with booster doses. “Vaccination is already assumed by the portfolio of health services; They will be vaccinated more or less quickly depending on the strategies they give us, ”says Rivero.
Normalization is the watchword at a time when the abandonment of the zero covid policy in China and the reopening of the borders have put the European Union on alert and the Spanish government has convened the alert commission for today to assess the situation.
And it is that the proximity of the Chinese New Year and the beginning of the festive period will mobilize more than 60 million people in China and the world will shake. No one wants to make a mistake similar to the one made in January 2020 when the impact that the coronavirus detected in a Wuhan market would have had was not assessed.
