Spain | Can we achieve herd immunity any quicker?

As it stands, the best health and economic policy for Europe and Spain would be a massive drive to quickly vaccinate the population against COVID-19. Given the supply restrictions on deliveries, vaccines must be optimized so that they can be administered as efficiently as possible.

Key points

• Key points:
• The number of doses injected in Spain could have been doubled if AstraZeneca had delivered the 100 million promised doses to the EU, instead of the 30 million that it is estimated they will have delivered by the end of the first quarter.
• Of the 70 million undelivered doses, Spain should have received around 10%, which is the equivalent figure of the number of vaccine doses administered to date.
• As many health authorities and scientific experts have already recommended, just as the elderly are prioritized for being vaccinated, people who have already had the virus—and therefore have antibodies against it—should receive the vaccine later.
• Based on data from the end of March, nearly five million people in Spain have received at least one dose of the existing vaccines. This naturally raises two questions: how many of these people already had the disease; and how many were still immune when they received their dose of the vaccine?
• It is paramount that we do everything we can to get available vaccines administered as efficiently as possible. The cost in economic and logistical terms is manageable, and the benefits are great.

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