Spain will keep a record of those who refuse the coronavirus vaccine

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“What will be done is a register … of those people who were offered it and simply rejected it,” Illa told Spanish television channel La Sexta.

Illa said vaccinations against Covid-19 would not be made mandatory and stressed that the information in the register would not be made public, in accordance with Spanish data protection laws.

But health professionals have warned that the idea poses potential dangers.

“The most important thing is to know how the registry will be used,” said Jose Luis Cobos, deputy director of the Spanish General Health Care Council.

“If it’s for public health purposes, to better understand COVID and it’s anonymous, that’s one thing,” he said.

“But if it’s ‘I’m on the list of bad people now,’ that’s another thing. We do not believe that a register should be used to violate freedoms or for employers against people, “he added.

The vaccine is launched

Spain began administering the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to citizens on Sunday, after it was authorized by European Union regulators last week.

Hours after Monday’s Illa television interview, the head of the Spanish Medicines Agency, Maria Jesus Lamas, told SER radio in Spain that the new register would be used “to understand the causes of the decline in vaccination … doubt or rejection ”.

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“The register is anonymous,” she added. “There’s no chance of identifying anyone on the register.”

The 17 regional governments in Spain administer vaccines throughout the country.

In the southern region of Andalusia, people are currently on a register if they are given a vaccine, including the batch number and who administered it for quality control purposes, a spokeswoman for the health department told CNN. from Andalusia.

The spokesman also noted that there is no register for members of the general public who refuse vaccination, although Andalusian health workers must sign a document if they refuse vaccination.

Spain has the ninth largest number of coronavirus cases in the world, with over 1.8 million, and the tenth highest number of deaths, with just over 50,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.

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