Catalonia has opened this Wednesday at 12 noon appointments to get the booster dose of the COVID vaccine to people between 40 and 49 years old. Since last week, everyone over 50 years of age or who had been vaccinated with AstraZeneca could do it.
Primary care centers continue to serve large numbers of patients and are collapsed. According to data from the Department of Health, this Tuesday 60,000 people were treated in these areas. The record of people treated in one day was 48,000 patients as of Monday. “It is 25% more than at the highest moment of the pandemic,” said Ariadna Mas, director of Primary Care, on the Rac1 station this morning. “The numbers are brutal.”
In addition, Catalan pharmacies have offered to take on more tasks and thus help decongest the Primary Care Centers (CAP) in the wake of the sixth wave. Since December 14 they have noticed a significant increase in demand for antigen tests and in recent days it has multiplied by 20. However, they believe that they could still take on more tasks, as other European countries do, leaving doctors and nurses of the CAP the most specialized medical care.
“If we have a lot of countries in Europe that have used pharmacies as a key tool, it does not seem a good idea not to use them here as much as possible; although Catalonia is the first in Spain, we are the last in Europe”, explained the president of the Federation of Associations of Pharmacies of Catalonia, Antoni Torres.
Pharmacies offer to issue covid passports, as with tests to schoolchildren. They predict that this would reduce many visits to private laboratories, which charge much more and cause, according to pharmacists, an increase in counterfeits.
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