OVIEDO – The Eurobarometer lists Asturias as the European region with the best managed vaccination processes against coronavirus. Furthermore, the respective report highlights the planning, training of professionals, and the use of doses in different European regions
The latest annual Eurobarometer report on Europe’s regions highlights the coronavirus vaccination campaign being conducted by the Spanish region. As such, Asturias is credited with the best local vaccine delivery rate in the entire European Union in the study published on Tuesday.
Highest vaccination rate
Moreover, the document analyses the vaccination system during the first half of the year. Furthermore, the autonomous region was declared the region with the highest vaccination rate in all of Europe on June 1. The data from the European body only put two countries above Asturias. These are Hungary and Malta, where the information is only provided at the national level. However, it should be noted Hungary is the only EU Member State to have used vaccines from Russia and China currently not approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Also, Malta ordered twice as many vaccines as would have been needed to immunise the entire population. Furthermore, it did not suspend the campaign when concerns were raised about blood clotting linked to the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
On the same date, June 1, Asturias was the Spanish community with the highest percentage of the population vaccinated: nearly 28% of the adult population was fully vaccinated on that day and 49% had the first dose, the survey found.
Good practices in local management
In addition to ranking the top 15 regions in percentage of vaccination, the report analyses good practices in local management. It highlights Asturias’s strategy that chose to exhaust all available vaccines, rather than leave some for the second dose, as other regions in Spain did. Therefore, “thanks to this strategy, Asturias was able to quickly achieve partial protection and efficiently manage stock,” the study highlights.
The establishment of vaccination teams trained from the start and the rapid planning of the logistics of storage, transport, and administration in a protocol already available in November 2020 are other good practices of the Principality highlighted by the Eurobarometer. Furthermore, “everything made it possible to launch the campaign the moment the vaccines were available,” the report quotes. Finally, the document points out that Asturias has made rapid progress in vaccinating people living in retirement homes and their care staff.
Asturias top region
The top ten best European regions are as follows:
- Hungary
- Malta
- Asturias
- Castile and Leon
- Ionian Islands
- South Aegean Islands
- Corsica
- Cyprus
- Galicia
- Latvia
Other Spanish regions mentioned are Extremadura in 13th place and La Rioja in 14th position.
