Two-thirds of the over-60s are now vaccinated, the group with the highest COVID-19 mortality

Basic Research Centre Janssen Cilag, Toledo

Pedro Sánchez announced that good progress in the vaccination process means that two-thirds of the over-60s have already received at least one dose of the vaccine, this being the group that was most vulnerable during the pandemic, accounting for 95% of COVID-19 deaths.

Spain will receive almost 4 million vaccine doses (1.76 from Pfizer, 400,000 from Moderna, 1.68 million from AstraZeneca and 126,000 from Janssen) this week, showing we have reached an important period in terms of delivery increases, a trend that will be maintained through May and above all in June, and that will enable us to meet the vaccination targets.

The President of the Government highlighted the importance of united action from all of society in the fight against this threat, both the public and private sector. This public-private cooperation has resulted in such noteworthy achievements as the development and approval in record time of the COVID-19 vaccines and the Temporary Lay-off Plans (Spanish acronym: ERTEs) that enabled thousands of jobs to be saved, as well as united action from the various tiers of government (State, regional and municipal).

Pedro Sánchez underlined the action taken by the European Union as a good example of this united front, with the joint purchase of vaccines for all Member States and the approval of recovery funds that will be used under the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan approved at the Council of Ministers on Tuesday, of which 7% will be allocated to R&D+i, one of the strongest needs revealed by the pandemic.

Janssen Basic Research Centre

The President of the Government was accompanied on his visit by the Minister for Health, Carolina Darias, the President of the Regional Government of Castile-La Mancha, Emiliano Garcia-Page, and the CEO of Janssen Spain, Luis Diaz Rubio.

The visitors were provided with explanations about the Janssen vaccine development process and the projects carried out at this facility, which are focused on the early stages of the search for new drugs and engaged in the design, synthesis, purification and structural characterisation of new molecules with therapeutic potential.

Vaccination strategy in Spain

Spain has acquired 17.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from Janssen. This batch, which forms part of the 93.5 million vaccine doses contracted under the joint procurement agreement of the European Union for the first three quarters of this year, will enable the same number of people to be vaccinated because the Janssen vaccine is a single-dose treatment. This will help reach the target of having vaccinated 70% of the population this summer.

Thanks to the hard work of thousands of people in the healthcare community and the excellent coordination carried out by the Government of Spain and the regional government authorities, Spain has administered the fifth-highest number of doses per 1,000 inhabitants in the last seven days anywhere in the European Union, ahead of Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and France.

Close on 15 million vaccines have been administered - 85.8% of the doses received from the Janssen, Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca laboratories - and 11 million people have now received at least one dose, while four million people have received the complete course of treatment.

Non official translation