The President of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, guaranteed this Thursday that the decision of the Ministry of Health and the autonomous communities to suspend the administration of doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine to those under 60 years of age "will not alter the objective that 70% of the Canarian population is immunized this summer".
During an appearance at the Presidential headquarters for the presentation of the new national and international routes of the Binter company, the President of the Canary Islands stressed that, during Wednesday, April 7, the Canary Islands managed to vaccinate 14,407 people and that it maintains its potential to administer 30,000 daily doses "if there were supplies for it".
Torres has acknowledged that the decision on AstraZeneca is "a setback" that will cause the rate of vaccination to drop "a little" in the coming days, but he has argued that "the reorganization of age groups and the new planning will barely last 48 hours".
The new decision adopted in Spain implies that this vaccine, which was initially only applied to people under 55 years of age, will now only be supplied to the group between 60 and 65 years of age.
This Wednesday, the European Medicines Agency acknowledged that the cases of thrombi detected in several countries may be related to this vaccine, but insisted that it would be a "very rare" and infrequent side effect. In addition, it again defended that the benefits are much greater than the possible risks, although several countries have suspended its administration, and Spain has rejoined them, which in its case has limited it to a very specific age group.
Regarding people under 60 years of age who had already received the first dose of AstraZeneca and were awaiting the second, a decision was not adopted this Wednesday. "Immunization will be completed in the manner that experts decide in the next few hours," they have stated in this regard from the Government of the Canary Islands.
