Spain’s health minister said authorities will keep a list of people who decline to get vaccinated and share it with other European countries. The data will be protected and not publicly available, he said.
“We will have a registry… of people who have been offered [the vaccine] and have simply rejected it,” Salvador Illa told La Sexta TV channel, adding that the list will be shared with “European partners.”
It is not a document that will be made public and it will be done with the utmost respect for data protection.
Illa explained that the list would help to avoid confusion over why some people had not been vaccinated.
Spain officially launched its immunization campaign on Sunday using the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Illa said the shots will be administered in accordance with “priorities” laid out by the country’s vaccination plan. “Citizens will be summoned when their turn comes, and what we are asking is – when you are summoned, go to the appointment,” the minister stated, stressing that getting a shot is strictly “voluntary, not mandatory.”
The EFE news agency reported on Tuesday that more than 350,000 doses of the vaccine were delivered to the nation’s major cities, from where they will be distributed across the country.
Mass vaccinations began across the EU over the weekend, shortly after the bloc’s drug regulator approved the Pfizer vaccine and weeks after nationwide vaccinations started in the UK.
“First we protect the more vulnerable. Soon we’ll have enough doses for all of us,” European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday.