Andalucía reopens provincial borders as authorities 'optimistic' about Covid figures nationwide

PROVINCIAL border closures in the southern region of Andalucía will be lifted on Thursday this week (April 29) for the first time in three months now that the pandemic is beginning to abate in the area.

Until now, nobody was allowed to travel outside their province, except in extenuating circumstances such as healthcare, when their district hospital was in the next one, travelling to work, and care duties.

This would have proven a headache for anyone living right on the border of their province, since their regularly-used shops and their friends may be on the wrong side, meaning they would have been off limits since January.

Regional president Juanma Moreno says the decision to reopen province borders is linked to the fact that the latest, fourth wave of the Covid-19 spread has been 'much milder', the vaccine roll-out has been progressing well and the region is 'better prepared'.

Head of Spain's disease control centre Fernando Simón – a face rarely out of the news in the past year, but until then relatively unknown to the general public – says he can 'see light at the end of the tunnel' with the pandemic, and that he is 'optimistic' at the trend in figures.

Spain has now started to give priority to the Pfizer vaccine and is beginning to 'relieve' the AstraZeneca inoculation, meaning those due to be called for their jab at the moment are more likely to be given the RNA-messenger version developed in Germany by Turkish researchers rather than the viral vector type created by international scientists at Oxford University for the Swedish pharmaceutical giant.

By now, most, if not all, healthcare and care staff, care home residents and the over-80s along with key public-facing workers should have been vaccinated, which has seen a considerable reduction in the number of fatalities and serious cases.

Barcelona has recently reported an outbreak of around 54 cases in a nursing home, which would, pre-vaccine, have resulted in numerous hospital admissions and a high number of fatalities, due to the age and frailty of most of those affected – but this time, the majority are asymptomatic and a small number have minor symptoms which do not need medical treatment beyond over-the-counter pharmaceutical preparations.

Catalunya as a whole has just revealed that it now has more residents fully immunised – with both doses of the jab, or the sole vaccine in the case of the Janssen version, which does not need a repeat – than it has cases of contagion.

Most regions are now vaccinating at least the 70-79 age group, although smaller regions are already onto the 60-69 and 50-59 groups.