Spain to offer fourth Covid vaccine dose to 'whole population'

Madrid: Spain will offer a fourth dose of a Covid-19 vaccine to its entire population, most likely at the end of the year, Health Minister Carolina Darias said Thursday.

Like many other countries, Spain already offers a fourth shot to older adults and those with compromised immune systems.

"There will be a fourth dose for the whole population," Darias said during an interview with private television channel La Sexta.

The timing for the start of the vaccine campaign for the fourth dose has not yet been decided but it will likely be in the last few months of the year when new vaccines -- which are adapted to fight new Covid-19 variants -- are expected to be available, she added.

Spain, a nation of some 47 million people, has to date fully vaccinated 93 percent of its population over the age of 12, one of the highest immunisation rates in the world.

The country has registered 12.5 million Covid-19 infections and 107,239 deaths since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

Spain in March 2022 began treating Covid-19 more like an endemic illness -- a regularly occurring milder disease like the flu -- and moved away from the detailed tracking system that was applied when the pandemic broke.