Spanish police unions on Tuesday (March 16) urged health authorities to follow up on members who recently took the AztraZeneca first jab before making any decisions on the second injection.
A union spokesman told Reuters they had reports of many cases of police officers who have taken sick leave after the first jab, many of them from batch ABV5300, currently being reviewed by Europe health authorities.
According to the Spanish police union, more than 20.000 police officers received the first shot of the vaccine at Atletico Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano stadium in February.
“We don’t know how this is going to evolve and on top of that we have uncertainty over what is going to happen with the second jab so we have requested to the central police department to do a follow up on the health of those officers vaccinated with that batch to supervise that everything is going to be well unlike other countries and we don’t have problems,” the inspector said.
Health Minister Carolina Darias announced on Monday (March 15) that Spain was joining a growing list of European countries hitting the brakes on the shot for at least two weeks over concerns of severe side effects.
Like emergency service workers teachers under 55 year-old were vaccinated with AstraZeneca’s.
In the town of Masamagrell, 17 kilometres north of Valencia, teachers received the dose minutes before the vaccination point had to be closed following health ministry announcement.
“We received the vaccine as it was scheduled and minutes after we got to know the news that the vaccine was halted in Spain,” said an unidentified teacher.
On Tuesday (March 16) Wanda Metropolitano stadium, one of the biggest vaccination centres in Madrid remained closed.
(Reuters)
