Spain’s Health Ministry has decided it will not order any more doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
This comes after confirmation from regional authorities in the country’s 17 autonomous communities that they have the necessary doses to vaccinate the remaining people in the 60 to 69 age group who received the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Spain has picked up the pace of vaccination of this group, the only group which was finally allocated the UK-Swedish produced vaccine after a small number of cases involving blood clot side effects.
With the emergence of the Delta variant in Spain, regional governments brought forward the second AstraZeneca vaccine of people in their sixties, taking the full vaccination rate from under 50 percent in late June to 78 percent on July 19th.
However, the are still more than a million people in the 60 to 69 age group in Spain who have not received their second and final AZ dose.
According to health authorities, there are enough AstraZeneca doses of the 10 million received still in stock for the remaining people to be fully immunised.