People over 60 should receive their COVID booster jabs by the end of the year

Thursday 23rd December 2021 – PRESS RELEASE with Mike Smith

The president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Ximo Puig, has announced that all the educational personnel of Infant, Primary and Secondary schools in the Comunidad Valenciana who were vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine will receive the booster dose before returning to the classrooms on Monday 10th January and that all citizens over 60 will have received this third dose before the end of the year.

This has been explained by the president after he attended the XXV Conference of Presidents and Autonomous Presidents, carried out online, in which the president has proposed to accelerate vaccination as much as possible as a “fundamental vector” to act in the face of the evolution of the pandemic.

Puig stressed that the meeting has confirmed that “all the territories are facing the sixth wave with great concern and with one priority: intensifying health protection by accelerating vaccination as much as possible.” He added: “Without a doubt, we are living a very complex moment”, which in the Comunidad Valenciana is faced with the objective of “avoiding a double saturation: hospital saturation and emotional saturation” of the citizens, all this “as long as hospital pressure allows and may be possible”.

At this point, he has insisted that “we are not the same as a year ago”, because the efforts of the citizens has produced results. “With the same current incidence in Spain, 11 months ago we had three times as many hospitalized as now, we had twice as many critical patients as now and we had a much higher mortality, 80% more,” he explained.

For the president, “reaching 94% vaccination in the Comunidad Valenciana has had a great reward, individual and collective”, and, for that reason, “the answer today has to be different; because the situation is also different thanks to the great vaccination, especially in older people”.

“Vaccination, protection and co-responsibility”

Thus, Puig said that “rather than [imposing] restriction measures typical of 2020, the Comunidad Valenciana defends protection measures typical of 2022” to “always maintain social complicity with citizens”, and summarized the strategy to be followed in three words : “vaccination, protection and co-responsibility”.

These three routes go through “intensifying vaccination with the doses that are necessary, persisting with non-invasive measures to protect health and complementing with measures to support emotional, social and economic well-being in the form of aid and reinforcement of public services”, all this “as long as the hospital tension allows it, and being dynamic depending on the change of scenery”, he specified.

Following this approach, the president has proposed six measures to the Spanish Government and the rest of the communities, some of which will be considered for approval this Thursday in an extraordinary Council of Ministers. The first is the mandatory use of the mask outdoors on a temporary basis and with three exceptions: rural areas, natural spaces and sports practice abroad.

In addition, Puig has proposed the implementation of the ‘COVID passport’ throughout Spain to achieve safer spaces and motivate those who are reluctant to get vaccinated. With this measure, the Comunidad Valenciana has managed to quintuple the first doses administered with a “call effect” to vaccination.

He has also proposed to speed up vaccination as a fundamental vector to the maximum. He recalled that the Comunidad Valenciana is promoting the express vaccination plan with 47 new permanent vaccination points and 146 specialist teams. This same Wednesday people have already begun to be summoned for the booster dose at these points.

Likewise, it has asked to facilitate the testing of cases to decongest Primary Care, limit New Year’s Eve parties and massive events as a measure of co-responsibility in the face of a situation as complex as the current one and agree between all the territories a common framework in relation to how quarantines are enforced.

The president has also been in favour of unifying recommendations regarding the family gatherings of these parties, such as limiting family meetings to a maximum of 10 people, not attending any family gathering if there are symptoms, preserving quarantine or isolation to whoever corresponds, dispense with those unnecessary encounters.

He has also requested, on the other hand, Spanish Government support to be able to finance the response to the pandemic.

Puig has pointed out that “society needs a minimum oxygen balloon this Christmas”, but “with the utmost caution”, and has also stressed that, “at this stage of the pandemic, the importance of mental health must be valued.”