Health Department will begin vaccinating at the Feixa Larga care home in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat

GironaThe Feixa Llarga care home in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona) will be the first centre in Catalonia to receive the first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which will be distributed throughout the territory and will be applied as of this Sunday, 27th. The Health Minister, Alba Vergés, has detailed the homes that will receive the first doses: Nostra Senyora de Ribera in Alt Pirineu, Balàfia 1 in Lleida, Residència la Mercè in Tarragona, Natzaret in Terres de l'Ebre, Fonts de Capellans in Central Catalonia, Mil·lenario Ciutat Vella in Barcelona, the care home in Sabadell and the Creu de Palau home in Girona.

The Public Health Secretary, Josep Maria Argimon, has admitted that the vaccination will be a logistic challenge due to the characteristics of the vaccine, which will arrive frozen and this makes its distribution difficult: they arrive in boxes of 23 kilos of dry ice and are distributed in vials of five doses. "This means that when we put it in, we will have to vaccinate five more people, and these are different elements from other vaccination campaigns", Argimon said, who also warned that the vaccination process will put more pressure on the health system. "I ask everyone to help professionals in this challenge", he said.

Argimon and Vergés made these statements during the press conference to analyse the epidemiological situation in Catalonia. On Christmas eve, Vergés asked citizens to take extreme measures to contain the virus: gather a maximum of ten people and two support bubbles, reduce social interaction and "seek alternatives to sitting around a table to avoid the risk of contagion". "We cannot let down our guard", he stressed, "what we do these days will determine the harshness of January".