Spain has raised the maximum age for administration of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine from 55 to 65, Health Minister Carolina Darias announced on Monday.
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“The age limit set at 55 is abolished and extended to 65,” said the Minister of Health at a press conference.
The Spanish authorities initially limited the use of this vaccine to those under 55 years of age because clinical trial data were more limited for older people.
But since its European authorization in January, other clinical trials on people over 55 have shown greater effectiveness and other countries have raised the maximum age for its inoculation.
The move comes as Spain resumes vaccinations with AstraZeneca on Wednesday, after the European Medicines Agency called the product from the Anglo-Swedish laboratory “safe and effective” last Thursday.
Spain and several other European countries had suspended the administration of the AstraZeneca vaccine as a precaution on March 15 in the face of serious and rare suspected cases of blood clots.
France has already resumed vaccination with AstraZeneca but has recommended since Friday to reserve it for people aged 55 and over because suspected cases of thrombosis have only been observed in people under 55 years old.
Despite the resumption of vaccinations, a YouGov opinion study published on Monday indicates that many Europeans remain very skeptical about the vaccine’s safety.
In Spain, the resumption and expansion of vaccinations with AstraZeneca should accelerate the campaign as the government plans to vaccinate 70% of the population by the end of the summer.
To date, this country of 47 million people has fully vaccinated over two million people with both doses, and administered over 6 million doses in total, with other vaccines from Pfizer / BioNtech and Moderna.
Spain is among the European countries hardest hit by the pandemic, with more than 3.2 million confirmed cases and more than 73,000 deaths.