BARCELONA, Spain (AP) – A judge in northwestern Spain has rejected a family’s objection and decided to allow health authorities to administer a coronavirus vaccine to a woman incapacitated in a nursing home.
The case seems to be the first known court in a European court to ask someone to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The Spanish government has repeatedly stressed that the shootings would be voluntary, as would the authorities in other European countries.
In a decision seen by The Associated Press on Wednesday, the judge for the court in the northwestern autonomous community of Galicia recently decided a request for a nursing home to suppress the refusal of the elderly resident’s family and to continue granting it a vaccine.
The medical staff at the old people’s home considered that the resident suffered a cognitive loss, insofar as “she was unable to provide valid consent”, according to the decision.
Judge Javier Fraga Mandián said the court has a legal obligation to intervene to protect women’s health. He said his decision was not based on the well-being of other residents, but that the “existence of tens of thousands of deaths” caused by the virus in Spain provided what he considered irrefutable evidence that not introducing the vaccine was more risky than any side effects. possible.
The company that runs the nursing home, DomusVi, told the PA through its public relations agency that, of all the homes it manages throughout Spain, this is the only case of a family that does not want to vaccinate a resident who has been considered unable to make personal health decisions.
DomusVi said that 98% of the 15,000 residents in its nursing homes in the country have agreed to receive the vaccine. It is said that the remaining 2% refused to be vaccinated, but unlike women they are considered fit to make their own health decisions.
DomusVi stated that he had requested the court to intervene in the interests of the health of all workers and residents in nursing homes and workers in the Galician unit.
Spain has administered more than 581,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine since it was authorized by the European Union at the end of December. Spain is also launching its first batches of Moderna vaccine.
The Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, declared on Thursday that Spain sees “a very low rejection of the vaccine, almost anecdotal”.
Nursing homes in Spain and across Europe have been devastated by the coronavirus, which is spreading rapidly among the elderly and people with pre-existing medical conditions. It is estimated that more than 25,000 people with COVID-19 have died in old people’s homes in Spain since the beginning of the pandemic.
Other lawsuits regarding the involuntary administration of vaccines may be on the horizon.
In southern Spain, a state prosecutor recently said that any family member who acts as legal guardians for residents of a nursing home could lose guardianship if they refuse permission for their relatives to be vaccinated.
The Italian government has approved the weekly decree to explicitly authorize hospital heads and individual doctors to express consent to inoculation on behalf of patients who are unable to do so themselves, including nursing home residents who are incapacitated and without a guardian to give consent. for them.
The procedure requires doctors to submit written documentation to a judge, who has 48 hours to approve or reject the application.
Although almost a dozen European countries have mandatory vaccination laws for diseases, including polio, measles and diphtheria. Laws are rarely enforced by the courts, although a Belgian court in 2008 fined and sentenced two groups of parents to five months in prison for failing to vaccinate their children against polio.
Unlike COVID-19 vaccines, which are still considered technically experimental, vaccines required by law in Europe are established vaccines that have been used for decades.
The World Health Organization has previously said it does not recommend requiring coronavirus vaccination, fearing it could undermine public confidence in available vaccines.
At a news conference last month, Dr Kate O’Brien, who heads the WHO vaccines department, said it would be better if countries created a “positive environment” for immunization, as opposed to mandates. But O’Brien acknowledged that it might make sense in some high-risk settings, such as hospitals, to ask staff members and patients to receive vaccines.
Some ethicists said the court’s decision to impose the woman’s vaccination was probably justified by its high risk for COVID-19, given that she lives in a nursing home.
“The court must consider the balance of probabilities and, if the woman is elderly, she has a much higher risk of dying from COVID than from a low-probability adverse event,” said Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Center for Practical ethics at Oxford University.
He said that even in countries that do not have mandatory vaccination laws, the state is obliged to protect people when those who make decisions on their behalf may not act in their best interests.
“If you don’t vaccinate this woman and she dies of COVID, then people will say, ‘Why didn’t you protect her?’ Savulescu said.
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Maria Cheng reported from Toronto. Nicole Winfield from Rome and Aritz Parra from Madrid contributed to this story.
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