Only 13.3% of Spain has received the third booster vaccine

EDCD data reveal that in Spain, only 13.3% of the population has had the third booster vaccine jab

Although the first phase of the Spanish vaccination campaign has been praised by international organisations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), where Spain has positioned itself as one of the European States with the highest percentage of immunised population, everything changes when we come to the third booster dose.
Some striking data reveal that Spain is not only below all of its neighbouring countries, but is even surpassed by the European States that have much lower vaccination percentages in the first doses.
According to the data handled by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (EDCD), the numbers speak for themselves. While neighboring France has managed to inject 45.3% of its population with a third dose, in Spain, this percentage only reaches 13.3%,
They are not isolated data. In Belgium this figure is 47%; in the Netherlands, 41.4%; in Germany, 43%; in Ireland, 49.5%; in Italy, 32.2%; in Greece, 38.5%; in Malta, 54.2%, and in Portugal, 36.2%.
Eastern states such as Poland and Slovakia also far exceed Spain, with 22.1% and 21.5% respectively with the booster doses. This is despite the fact that only 58.2% of its population are vaccinated with one dose in the first case, and 50.7% in the second.
Spain only exceeds Bulgaria and Romania (6.5% in both countries) with the third dose. In those two countries, the rates of the booster vaccination are 40.8% in the first case, and 28.2% in the second.

What is the reason for this poor statistic?

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved the third shot last October for those over 18 years of age. It was agreed to allow the third jab six months after the second one. Since then though, Spain has been one of the countries furthest behind when it comes to opening up immunisation to the different layers of the population.
Most European states have already been injecting all age groups for weeks, while our country has had to wait until this past week for the Ministry of Health and the autonomous communities to decide whether to start inoculating young people aged between 18 and 39 years.
It was necessary to wait until mid-December for the group between 40 and 59 years old to begin receiving their third dose. Likewise, this past week, the Public Health Commission also gave the go-ahead to cut the period to receive the booster jab after the second dose, from six to five months, as reported by larazon.es.

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