Alex Trelinski
TEXT messages will start being sent from tomorrow(June 25) with appointments for people aged 60 to 65 in the Valencia region to get a second AstraZeneca COVID vaccination.
Some notifications were sent earlier this month but were withdrawn because the appointment dates were too soon as there needed to be a 12 week gap between the two inoculations.
The postponement caused some concern among residents wanting their second jab with social media full of conspiracy theories that there was a ‘problem’ and there was a ‘shortage of AstraZeneca doses’.
The regional health ministry confirmed this week that SMS texts will be sent this Friday and Saturday to ‘people born between 1956 and 1960 to be summonsed for the next seven days’.
The ministry said that the appointments will cover people jabbed with AstraZeneca in early April.
Concerns over the delay have surrounded the spread of the new Delta variant and that the 60 to 65 age category was not getting the same protection as older and younger groups.
For example, ministry figures show that 41% of people in their fifties have been fully immunised.
Injections for that group started around six weeks later than for those who got the first AstraZeneca shot.
Over 500,000 extra doses of AstraZeneca arrived in Spain at the start of the week.
READ MORE NEW ASTRAZENECA SUPPLIES ARRIVE IN SPAIN
SECOND ASTRAZENECA INJECTION APPOINTMENTS CANCELLED IN VALENCIAN COMMUNITY
