COVID-19

THE bishop of Cartagena José Manuel Lorca Planes and four other leading Catholic Church officials in Murcia have been accused of jumping the queue to receive Covid-19 vaccines. Spanish newspaper La Opinión de Murcia reported they passed themselves off as chaplains of a care home in order to receive a shot. Accusations of cheating by politicians and public officials to obtain protection against the virus have become a major scandal […]

SPANISH regional governments are pressing central government to allow a higher age limit for people to receive the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19. They feel the current restriction of the shot to people under 55 is too strict; especially as the World Health Organisation has insisted the vaccine is safe for the over-65 population. Madrid, Andalusia and Catalonia all feel the age limit is too severe and hampers the vaccination programme […]

THE Valencia government is considering allowing bars, cafes and restaurants to open again from next month in a gradual relaxation of rules. President of the regional government Ximo Puig and senior members of his team are meeting tomorrow to discuss the pandemic and the ‘relative’ improvement in coronavirus statistics, including a decrease in hospital and intensive care admissions. According to insiders, the government will retain the bulk of measures until […]

The United Kingdom will require from next Monday three COVID-19 tests for travelers who want to enter the country. The first one must be carried out in the 72 hours before the day of the trip, and another two during the 10 days of the mandatory quarantine. In addition, the British Government has decided to impose a sentence of 10 years' imprisonment on travellers who lie about the countries visited if […]

The Higher Court of Justice of the Basque Country (TSJPV) has provisionally accepted the request of the hospitality associations to allow the reopening of the premises of municipalities in the red zone due to the high rate of contagion by COVID-19. This way they can open but following the general restrictions in the Basque Country, with a limitation of 50% of the capacity and only until eight in the afternoon. […]

The 19-year-old British man, Joseph Flavill, had an accident in early March 2020 that put him in a coma for 10 months. Now he has woken up not knowing anything about what has happened during these months and the relatives assure that they do not know how Joseph will understand "everything we have lived with this confinement". Joseph Flavill manages to wake up from his coma after 10 months. He suffered […]

MASS immunisation of people across Valencia cannot immediately start because of a lack of shots available to the region’s health services. President of the Valencia government Ximo Puig stressed the “fundamental” thing was to ensure all priority groups received a shot this month. He said he was committed to “decisive” progress in the vaccination programme with more doses arriving. “We are going to receive more than 60,000 vaccines from the […]

SPANISH health chiefs have ruled the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccination for Covid-19 will only be used for people aged under 55; leaving out 15 million Spaniards above that age. The decision only came after three meetings by the health service´s public health commission made up of central government experts and representatives of the regions. It means changes for the country´s vaccination programme, currently reaching the end of phase 1 that gave shots […]

NEW health minister Carolina Darias believes Spain will meet its target of vaccinating 80% of people aged over 80 against Covid-19 by the end of March – an objective set out at the beginning of the programme. She said 1.8 million doses of the Astra-Zeneca-Oxford vaccine would be received over February and a further 2.7 million shots of Pfizer-BionNTech would arrive in March. However, the minister said only the Pfizer […]