As reported in Monday-s Leader Newspaper, experts, scientific societies and the College of Physicians are all questioning the use of the IFA and Ciudad de la Luz facilities to carry out mass vaccinations against the coronavirus
They believe that the sites that are established to speed up the vaccination campaign should be far more accessible to the general population that the two venues announced on Saturday by the President of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig.
“Large structures are awkward and not easily accessible and it only makes sense to use them if 30,000 or 40,000 people have to be vaccinated a day, which is not the case given the rate at which vaccines are arriving,” says Juan Francisco Navarro, president of the Society Valencian of Preventive Medicine.
Particularly in these two large facilities “they will not be able to take all the necessary health and security measures” and he questions Puig’s approach to putting on free transport so that people can attend the centres.
Navarro says that as long as there are a sufficient number of doses, it is much more sensible to erect outdoor tents by the side of health centres to be able to carry out vaccinations there. “All health centres have enough space to erect a tent. You only need about 20 sq metres.”
Vice President of the College of Physicians, Herman Schwarz , says that he has repeatedly requested additional centres to vaccinate, however, he believes that these should be within the cities. “It does not make any sense to set up vaccination areas on sites that many people will not be able to reach,” says Schwarz in reference to IFA and Ciudad de la Luz.
He asks that Health to study other more accessible areas, such as car parks or the facilities offered by city councils to ease the pressure on health centres.
The Community Nursing Association also questions the creation of “vaccination centres”, since they believe that the normal operation of health centres would be compromised because equipment would have to be transferred from Primary Care to these new centres. Together with the Spanish Society of Family Medicine and the Federation of Community Nursing Associations, they too ask that vaccinations continue to be carried out in health centres, “which must also be provided with additional human resources.”
