Spain’s strategy in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic “is showing results,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Sunday, presenting his country’s vaccination plan for 2021.
• Read also: All developments in the COVID-19 pandemic
Spain has only registered 400 cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 inhabitants on average for 14 days, against 530 cases at the beginning of the month, argued Mr. Sanchez after a virtual summit of the G20 of two days.
This is proof that the state of emergency declared last month, which allowed the regional authorities to take a whole series of restrictions, is bearing fruit, he said.
“The strategy is working,” he said, adding that Spain had managed to achieve a reduction in cases without imposing a second lockdown, as has been the case in other European countries.
Sanchez unveiled the government’s plan to be able to immunize “a substantial portion” of the country’s 47 million people by mid-2021.
This vaccination campaign should be launched in January in 13,000 points of the country.
As an example, he recalled that 14 million people had been vaccinated against influenza in 2020 against 10 million in 2019.
“Our health system is able to vaccinate in a short time, it is frankly excellent and we are therefore optimistic about achieving these ambitious goals,” continued the Prime Minister.
“We still have difficult months ahead of us, but the course has been set,” he said.
Spain, where a curfew has been in force since the end of October – with the exception of the Canary Islands, in the Mediterranean – has recorded more than 42,000 deaths and 1.5 million people infected since the start of the pandemic.