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Spain started vaccinating its citizens against COVID-19 on Sunday.
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The country’s Health Minister, Salvador Illa, said that vaccination is voluntary, but that the authorities will keep a list of all those who refuse and share it with the European Union.
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Illa told TV channel La Sexta that the list would not be made public and “will be made with the utmost respect for data protection”.
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Spain experienced a second brutal increase in coronavirus cases. It is one of the most affected countries in Europe and, until Sunday, it had registered more than 50,000 deaths from the virus.
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Spain is establishing a register of people who refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine and plans to share the list with other countries in the European Union, announced the Spanish Minister of Health.
Spain received its first doses on Sunday, with plans to vaccinate 2.3 million people in the next 12 weeks, El País reported. The inoculations started on Sunday, with the first dose going to a 96-year-old man, the newspaper said. .
Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Sunday to broadcaster La Sexta that receiving the vaccine would be a voluntary process, in which citizens are asked to receive their doses, free of charge, through the country’s national health system.
But he encouraged people to take it, saying, “The way to defeat the virus is to vaccinate us all.”
He said that other European partners would have access to the register of those who refuse, “as is done with other treatments,” he said.
But he added: “It is not a document to be made public and will be done with the utmost respect for data protection.” It is not clear exactly what personal data should be recorded and shared.
The European Commission proposed a broad set of measures for cooperation and data sharing on vaccinations in the bloc in April 2018.
Spain is one of the countries most affected by the coronavirus. It recorded nearly 1.9 million cases and, as of Monday, more than 50,000 people in the country with the virus had died, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
As in many other European countries, there was a resurgence of cases in the fall.
This wave appears to be in decline, but Illa said on Sunday that people should not “let their guard down.”
Spaniards remain under curfew between 11 pm and 6 am, with many areas keeping people at home, except for work, assistance or access to medicines, according to the BBC. This regime is expected to remain in effect until May, the broadcaster said.
Spain is vaccinating citizens with the two-dose vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, according to El País.
According to the country’s Unified Health System, people will be told when to go to receive the first and second doses, Illa told La Sexta.
Other vaccines will also be used as they obtain approval from the European Medicines Agency, according to El País.
Europe is facing new concerns about a variant of the coronavirus that is spreading rapidly in the UK. The variant, which is feared (but not confirmed) because it is more infectious, but not more lethal, has been reported in EU countries, including Spain, France and Germany.
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