High-risk groups to get Covid vaccine in December or January, say health authorities

President Pedro Sánchez believes mass inoculation could be as early as six months away – coinciding with the planned end of the State of Alarm, which has been declared until May 2021 to avoid having to waste time on votes and political debates if emergency measures are needed across the country.

Head of Spain's disease control authority, Fernando Simón, says the high-risk members of the community will start getting their vaccines by December or January.

With vaccines for everyone expected by May, these would also coincide with the 'change in season', says Sánchez – and as most strains of Coronavirus, including the common cold, tend to be more rife in autumn and winter than in spring and summer, the two factors combined will 'help us to progressively recover that long-wished for normality', the president says.

“We've got six months ahead of us during which we need the same collective discipline that we showed during the first wave of the virus,” he states.

The European Commission is in charge of negotiations and contracts for buying vaccines 'off-plan', meaning they will already have been purchased and paid for before they are even ready for administration.

As a result, as soon as the inoculations are ready to go, they will be delivered straight to where they are needed.

So far, the European Union has signed three purchase contracts and is negotiating a further four.

Several of these pharmaceutical companies are said to be 'close to acquiring the required information' to be able to certify their vaccines as safe and effective.

One of the most advanced projects, developed at Oxford University for AstraZeneca, has already signed a deal with the Commission for 300 million doses to be distributed across the 27 members of the bloc – and 31 million of these will go to Spain, the equivalent of one vaccine per head for two-thirds of the population.

A Spanish nurse based in the UK who volunteered for the 'Oxford vaccine' clinical trials said earlier this year that the medication would be on the street by November 3 – this was two days ago, but setbacks during the trials, including a Brazilian volunteer who died, have delayed its distribution.

Head of AstraZeneca's Oncology Research and Development Area, Spain-born Dr Josep Baselga, has now said that the first few doses should be out in December and that, if all goes well, by the end of the first quarter of 2021, the vaccine should be 'at an advanced stage of distribution'.

Director of the Health Emergencies and Alerts Coordination Centre – part of the ministry of health – Fernando Simón has said the initial timescales for the earliest vaccines remain on the table.

“The first few doses will enable us to vaccinate the high-risk groups in December or, perhaps, January,” he has announced.

“Inoculating the entire population will not be possible until all risk groups are vaccinated, and we expect this to be by spring.

“We forecast that mass vaccines for the whole population will start in April, if we're very lucky; Pedro Sánchez's estimate of May is a prudent one, but if we're very unlucky, it'll be by June.”

Secretary of State for health, Silvia Calzón, says her department is preparing a bulk purchase of vaccines that will 'exceed the number of Spaniards' – meaning inhabitants of Spain, irrespective of nationality – and has stressed the importance of ensuring that the buying process goes ahead as soon as is feasibly possible.

“These vaccines are an absolutely necessary investment in order to enable us all to get back to normality,” she says.