Two Spanish companies manufacturing Covid vaccines

Although clinical trials are under way in at least three hospitals in Spain – two in Madrid and one in Santander, Cantabria – these are preparing inoculations for the Belgian company Janssen, the European holding of US-based Johnson & Johnson.

And Spanish scientists and trial volunteers based in the UK are on the 'Oxford vaccine' team, meaning the country has been very involved from the start.

But Rovi Farma and Zendal are the first two manufacturers on home ground, and brief details of their work have been revealed by health minister Salvador Illa.

Rovi Farma, in Madrid, had already been confirmed as the manufacturer for the vaccine developed by the US company Moderna, and it has now been revealed that the inoculation under construction by Novavax is due to be mass-produced by the Spanish bio-pharmaceutical company Zendal.

Clearly, this does not mean the vaccines made in Spain will land in the country first, or as a priority, since development is global and quotas have been set aside for different nations or blocs of nations, such as the European Union, to ensure fair distribution.

Justice and equality reasons aside, it would not make sense for only a handful of countries to have full access to the immunisation, since these would still be at risk from people in territories that did not have it as international travel means any contagious condition can swiftly become a pandemic, as has already been seen with a virus that appeared to be confined to the Chinese city of Wuhan and, within less than two months, ended up affecting almost every town and village on earth.

Nearly 10,800 cases of Covid-19 have been reported in the past 24 hours, of whom three in 10 are in Madrid, plus 241 deaths – again, most of which are in the capital.

Some parts of Spain have been able to relax restrictions this week as case numbers have peaked and begun to tail off – in the city of Valencia, the third-largest in the country and the worst-hit part of the Comunidad Valenciana region, the public are now 'recommended' to avoid gatherings of 10 or more people, but this is no longer compulsory.

Elsewhere in the Comunidad Valenciana and other parts of Spain outside Madrid, stringent testing, contact-tracing and immediate isolation of 'positives' mean outbreaks have largely been contained swiftly.

In general, 70% of new cases remain asymptomatic, and many area health departments in densely-populated coastal zones have not reported any fatalities from Covid-19 in four or five months, even where they continue to detect a stream of 'positives'.