MADRID (Reuters) -Elderly residents and health workers at nursing homes will be the first to get vaccinated against the coronavirus in Spain, Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Tuesday, unveiling a national vaccination plan that is due to kick off in January.
Other health workers will be next to be vaccinated, Illa said, with a total of 18 groups of citizens being, one after the other, allowed to get the vaccine shots in one of Spain’s 13,000 local public health centers.
Spain expects to cover a substantial part of the population within the first six months of 2021, but will not make vaccination against the coronavirus compulsory.
The objective of the plan is “to be ready as a country to vaccinate from the first moment we start receiving vaccination doses”, Illa told a news conference.
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo, Jose Elias Rodriguez and Inti Landauro, editing by Andrei Khalip and Ingrid Melander)
