Going on vacation or having passed the covid in January: the reasons for the increase in demand for the vaccine in July

The image of the queues for get vaccinated against covid-19 without an appointment will reproduce again, four months after emblematic vaccindromes such as the Ciutat de les Arts will close. The Ministry of Health has decided reopen some of these vaccindromes (17 in total) to inoculate covid vaccines without an appointment throughout the Valencian Community with the aim of absorbing the growing demand for, above all, third doses.

As the administration announced yesterday, for now vaccination points are being opened without an appointment in several health centers and it is being done in the midst of a rebound in covid cases. The motivation to do so is not directly related to the increased infection, that also, but with the beginning of the holidays and the need to show that you have the booster dose to enter certain countries and that the recommended time to get the additional dose for all that bag of people who were infected in January and February, tens of thousands of Valencians, has already passed.

Five months to wait if we get infected in January

Sources from the Ministry consulted by this newspaper confirmed that, indeed, there is a “dispersed demand” for these profiles of people who now want to be vaccinated either to travel or because they can already get that third dose after being infected in the sixth wave. Re-offering places to do it without an appointment “facilitates access” for those who seek to be vaccinated and, in addition, makes things easier when it comes to managing and distributing the vials. In addition, offering sites without an appointment will also make it easier for those who did not want to get it and have been rethinking it with the seventh wave, to be able to do it in a more accessible way, although the vaccine has continued to be given all these months by appointment in the centers of Health.

Precisely in health centers, for example, in Alcoi that have already organized specific vaccination campaigns for third doses, quoting people via SMS, their forecasts have been overwhelmed.

And it is that this is going to be the summer in which, whoever can afford it, will recover the lost habit of traveling and although in recent months the countries have been relaxing the entry requirements, there are still many destinations that require all three vaccinations. And not everyone has wanted to wear it until now or has been able to. Because it is worth remembering that if, after the two doses, we were one of the about 790,000 Valencians who were infected with covid Between December and mid-March, the Ministry of Health marked a period of at least five months to give us the third dose, and this time is now fulfilled.

Coverage declines with age

In fact, the figures of Valencians who currently have the third dose vary greatly depending on the age group. Among the older ones, there are very few who do not already have it (93% got it, many together with the flu), but the percentage decreases as age decreases. Still among people in their fifties, eight out of ten are covered with the third dose, but the percentage drops to 68% among 40-year-olds, 54% among thirty-somethings and 49.57% among twenty-somethings.

The explanation is that the sixth wave fully reached these age groups that had not yet been called to be vaccinated of the booster dose. In addition, many people, after receiving the complete guideline, considered that the reinforcement was not necessary and chose to avoid that third puncture.

Experts insist on need for booster dose and more so now with the increase in infections in the so-called seventh wave. It is true that the sublineages of the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron variant (which are now the ones that are circulating most strongly) are proving to “escape” better from the vaccine, but this vaccine escape is being seen in the protection that is acquired so as not to get infected. The protection generated by the vaccine against severe disease and hospitalization, however, is being maintained although, like everything, as time goes by it can decline.

No “outside” help

The reopening of vaccination centers comes at one of the worst times, organizationally speaking, for health centers. The professionals have just started their vacation shifts and the centers are already closed in the afternoon since, in the absence of substitutes, the professionals who work concentrate their work in the mornings. Now, each health department will have to reorganize its (few) human resources to also cover these vaccination points, since according to the Ministry of Health, it will be issue of each health area resolve how staff are managed for it, since there will be no specific team.

This summer many offices have not been able to open and services have been closed due to the lack of professionals to serve them: the employment exchanges are empty.

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