MADRID (Reuters) – Spain has begun administering second shots of the coronavirus vaccine to elderly nursing home residents, while a court in Seville ruled on Monday that a home could inoculate an incapacitated resident against her family’s wishes.
Like many other countries, Spain is racing to vaccinate care homes to prevent a repeat of the epidemic’s devastating first wave, which killed some 20,000 residents between March and May, according to preliminary data reported by El Pais newspaper.
In the central city of Guadalajara, 96-year old Araceli Hidalgo Sanchez, Spain’s earliest recipient of a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, said she was delighted to have received the second and encouraged others to do the same.
Smiling from behind her mask as she walked through the grounds of the Los Olmos nursing home using a walking frame, she said that more than anything she wanted to see her family.
“I haven’t done that since the bug got here.”
By Monday morning, eight of Spain’s 17 regions had got underway with the second round of jabs, the health ministry said.
Though vaccination is voluntary in Spain, a court in the southern city of Seville authorised a nursing home to vaccinate a severely incapacitated 86-year-old woman, despite her son’s objections, in the second such ruling in a week.
The judge presiding over the case said protecting public health must take precedence over the family’s concerns.
“It appears to be the only effective option to adequately safeguard her life against the real risk of developing a serious COVID-19 infection,” the ruling read.
New infections have skyrocketed in the wake of the Christmas holidays, with more than 40,000 cases added on Friday. But the Health Ministry has ruled out a return to nationwide confinement despite calls from regional administrations for tougher measures.
The national government has taken the northern region of Castile and Leon to court over its imposition of an 8 p.m. curfew, which is two hours earlier than permitted under nationwide rules.
(Reporting by Nathan Allen and Emma Pinedo, editing by Andrei Khalip and Mike Collett-White)
