The first doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine have now arrived in Spain from Belgium, as confirmed by the Spanish government. Spain is to receive about 600,000 doses in six weeks and the first 37,500 - in total, 375 boxes containing 100 each - arrived this morning at 8am at the Spanish health ministry's central warehouse. From there, they will be distributed across the Spanish state to reach their final destinations tomorrow or Thursday.
Thus, from now on, there will be two anti-Covid vaccines being administered in Spain. Firstly, the one from Pfizer and BioNTech and now, that developed by the US pharmaceutical company Moderna. Vaccination with the Moderna vaccine has been under way in the United States for days.
Covid immunity via Moderna jab could last a year
The immunity to coronavirus resulting from the Moderna vaccine, which is claimed to be 94.1% effective against Covid-19, should last a year, company representatives announced on Monday. The US pharmaceutical lab said it was confident that the messenger RNA (mRNA) technology it was using was the right one to deploy a vaccine effective against the new coronavirus variant that has now been detected in many countries.
Advantage over Pfizer
Moderna's vaccine, of which the European Commission has ordered 160 million doses, offers the advantage that it can be stored at minus 20 degrees Celsius, which requires simpler logistics than Pfizer, which needs to be at minus 70 degrees C and is distributed to countries in large packages of almost a thousand doses.
Could the Oxford vaccine be the third?
Today, pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford have applied to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for a possible conditional license for the use of their Covid-19 vaccine in the European Union, and the EMA could make a decision before January 29th.
As confirmed by the agency, its human medicines experts (CHMP) will analyze the entire available data package in the "shortest possible time" and could issue their conclusions on the possibility for the European Commission to grant the conditional license for the AstraZeneca vaccine by the end of the month.
Catalonia to begin giving second jabs of Pfizer
"Next week we will start giving the second dose of the vaccine. We have to wait seven days for the person to have generated immunity." This was explained by the Catalan health minister Alba Vergés on Monday. Catalan health teams will this week complete the vaccination process in "green" care homes - that is, those that have not had any coronavirus outbreaks. Thus, for these centres, the second dose can begin next week.
Main image: A dose of the Moderna vaccine / Efe