Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa has announced that any citizens who decline being vaccinated against the coronavirus will be listed in a new register which will be shared with other European nations.
According to CNN , the list will be completely anonymous and won’t be made public to any other citizens or to any employers.
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As Illa explained earlier this week, those who are added to the register will be anyone who’s offered the vaccine, but who refuses to take it.
“It is not a document which will be made public and it will be done with the utmost respect for data protection,” he told Spain’s La Sexta TV channel, as per CNN .
“People who are offered a therapy that they refuse for any reason, it will be noted in the register… that there is no error in the system, not to have given this person the possibility of being vaccinated.”
The Health Minister also emphasized that vaccines won’t be made mandatory in Spain, but he believes refusing it would be a “mistake.”
“People who decide not to get vaccinated, which we think is a mistake, are within their rights,” he explained . “We are going to try to solve doubts. Getting vaccinated saves lives, it is the way out of this pandemic.”
Following Illa’s announcement, Maria Jesus Lamas, the head of Spain’s Medicines Agency, gave more insight into this vaccine register.
As CNN reported, she explained that it’s intended use is to “understand the causes behind declining the vaccination… doubt or rejection.”
“The registry is anonymous,” she added. “There’s no chance of identifying anyone in the registry.”
A poll conducted in November 2020 showed nearly half of Spanish citizens were unwilling to take a vaccine.
Conducted by the Centre for Sociological Studies (CIS), the official poll found that around one-third of the population said they’d take the vaccine immediately. However, 55.2% of the total 2,130 respondents said they’d sooner hold off on being vaccinated and see what effects it has on other people first.
Spain began administering the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine on December 27 as part of the country’s first stage of its immunization program.
Over the next 12 weeks , Spain is expected to receive 4,591,275 doses of the Pfizer vaccine which will in turn be used to immunize 2,295,638 people, including residents and staff in senior homes, healthcare workers, and non-institutionalized adults.
h/t: CNN
