Distribution to autonomous regions to begin on Monday

Spain receives first 196,800 doses of AstraZeneca and Oxford University vaccine against COVID-19

News - 2021.2.6

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This is the first shipment by the pharmaceutical company to our country, after its recent authorisation for commercialisation for adults over the age of 18 by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and its approval by the European Commission.

As announced by the Minister for Health, Carolina Darias, following the plenary session of the Inter-territorial Council of the National Health System this week, over the course of February, our country expects to receive a total of 1,810,575 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

It should also be remembered that the Public Health Committee, which met at its plenary session on Friday, and following the scientific evidence generated in clinical trials, set 55 as the maximum age of people to receive the doses of the AstraZeneca and Oxford University vaccine against COVID-19 in Spain. Similarly, approval was given this week to begin to administer the AstraZeneca vaccine to active healthcare and day-care workers not included in groups 2 and 3 previously and that the interval recommended between the administration of the first and second doses should be between 10 and 12 weeks.

More than 4 million doses of vaccine against COVID-19 in February

With the incorporation of the scheduled shipments of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the Government of Spain plans to distribute, over the course of the month of February, more than 4 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines against the coronavirus COVID-19.

In addition to the 1,821,575 AstraZeneca doses, almost 2.2 million doses are scheduled of the vaccines based on messenger RNA (BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna). The next group of people to be administered the vaccine will be those over the age of 80.

The certification of the reception of this first shipment of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Spain was attended by the Director of the Spanish Medicines and Health Products Agency (Spanish acronym: AEMPS), María Jesús Lamas; the Chairman of AZ Spain, Rick R. Suárez; the Head of the Medicines Inspectorate and Control Agency, Manuel Ibarra; and the Head of the Management Support Unit of AEMPS, Antonio Blázquez.

Non official translation