MADRID – Spain accelerated the vaccination rate significantly this summer. While less than 7% of Spaniards had been fully vaccinated in April, that percentage is now more than 62%. However, as the vaccination rate among teens is still low, they are at extremely high risk according to the statistics.
At the time of writing, almost 61 million injections have been administered in Spain. By April, only 6.5% of the Spanish population had received a full dose of one of the corona vaccines. This figure is currently 62.2%. As such, the percentage is getting closer to the target of 70%. Initially, this was seen by the Spanish government as a benchmark for herd immunity.
Control instead of herd immunity in Spain
However, with greater knowledge, experts now believe this goal can only be achieved at a percentage of close to 90%. Consequently, as the vaccination rate in Spain is expected to be around 80%, talk is no longer about herd immunity but about controlling the pandemic.
In any case, vaccination remains one of the main means of protecting the vulnerable. Some Spanish regions have already announced that an injection can be obtained without an appointment. However, it is mainly the young people who are most at risk because many of them have not yet been vaccinated.
How many Spaniards are vaccinated?
93.3% of all people over 40 have received the first shot and just over 90% of people have already been fully vaccinated. However, these percentages are very different for the Spanish population under 40 years of age.
66% of the twenty-somethings have received one shot and just under 30% of them have been fully vaccinated. Barely 40% of teenagers between the ages of 12 and 19 have had a single shot. And less than 7% of this target group has been fully vaccinated.
Hispanic Teens Are At Extremely High Risk
Partly because of this low vaccination coverage, there is an extremely high risk among young people between the ages of 12 and 19 in all autonomous regions. This target group shows the highest corona incidence of all age groups in Spain. Over the past 14 days, it was around 1,000 cases per 100,000 people.
Furthermore, the situation in Navarre is the worst. In this Spanish region, there has been an average of 1415 cases per 100,000 people in the past two weeks. Navarre is closely followed by the Basque Country, Galicia, and Extremadura with figures exceeding 1,300 cases per 100,000. The incidence among people in their twenties still remains high. And in the whole of Spain, it also exceeds 900 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
Although these are still extremely high figures, the number of new corona cases has fallen in almost all Spanish regions. In Navarre and Catalonia, the numbers have fallen the most in recent days.
