Vaccines for high school and sixth-form students to start a fortnight before new term

SECONDARY school pupils including sixth-formers will be given at least their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine before the autumn term starts, president Pedro Sánchez has confirmed. 

All students who have finished primary school and are onto their ESO (pre-GCSE) cycles and in Bachillerato (A-levels) will begin their immunisation two weeks before they go back to class.

Sánchez, announcing this today (Saturday), said it was 'a decisive step' towards 'returning to long-awaited social and academic normality'.

He urges the schools community to focus on 'going forward' within the 'new normality' rather than 'going back to how things were before' – in reference to the major structural changes and flexibility forced on education by the pandemic.

As an example, during lockdown, children were taking their classes online and emailing their homework to teachers or uploading it to a web portal, and those in low-income families who could not afford computers, tablets or internet connections were given these on loan.

“The schools community has shown that educational and academic excellence is a goal within our reach in Spain,” stated Sánchez during his announcement of the pupil vaccine plan from the Moncloa Palace, the country's official presidential residence.

“In Spain, there's a joy at being alive, in living; that's clear to see in our society. We're in full swing with the vaccine roll-out, breaking record after record in the number of doses administered every day, and we're gradually recovering employment. All this has also been possible with the help of the educational community.”

Spain is 'strongly focused' on getting its life back, and its recovery 'needs to be fair and much more long-lasting', the president argues. 

This time last year, with the phased release from lockdown and 'new normality' on the horizon, Spain thought it would be able to put the Covid crisis behind it in 2021, but a second, third and then a fourth wave of contagion, starting in autumn and continuing until spring, proved a massive setback.

The vaccine roll-out has drastically reduced the number of cases and pressure on hospitals, although most of the country is currently only starting to work on vaccinating those in their 40s, with younger members of society probably not likely to get the summons until later in the summer.

A few smaller regions are well into the 40-something age group, although Madrid and Valencia only started late this week.

As vaccines are given in descending order of age now that the elderly, health-compromised, key and public-facing workers have been immunised, Pedro Sánchez has only just had his first dose.

At age 49 – although he did not have an 'official' birthday this year, as he was born on February 29 – the president was among the first group in his decade in Madrid to be summoned for the vaccine this week.