Madrid (CNN) -
People in Spain who refuse to be vaccinated against the coronavirus will be included in a new registry that will be shared with other nations of the European Union, said the Spanish Minister of Health, Salvador Illa.
"What will be done is a record ... of those people who have been offered and have simply rejected it," Illa told the Spanish channel La Sexta.
Illa said that vaccines against covid-19 will not be mandatory and stressed that the information in the registry will not be made public, in accordance with the data protection laws of Spain.
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But health professionals have warned that the idea presents potential dangers.
"The most important thing is to know how the registry will be used," said José Luis Cobos, deputy director of the General Council of Nursing of Spain.
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"If it's for public health reasons, to better understand covid and it's anonymous, that's one thing," he said.
But if it's 'Now I'm on the bad people list', that's something else.
We do not believe that a registry should be used to infringe freedoms, or for employers to use it against people, "he added.
Vaccination is in progress
Spain began administering the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to citizens on Sunday, after it was cleared by European Union regulators last week.
Hours after Illa's television interview on Monday, the director of Spain's Medicines Agency, María Jesús Lamas, told Spain's SER radio that the new record would be used "to understand the causes of the decline in vaccination ... doubt or rejection ».
"The record is anonymous," he added.
"There is no possibility of identifying anyone in the registry."
The 17 regional governments of Spain administer vaccines throughout the country.
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In the southern region of Andalusia, people are currently listed on a registry if they are given a vaccine, including their batch number and who administered it for quality control purposes, a spokeswoman for the Andalusian health department told CNN.
The spokeswoman also pointed out that there is no registry of citizens in general who reject vaccines, although Andalusian health workers must sign a document if they refuse to be vaccinated.
Spain has the ninth highest number of coronavirus cases in the world, with more than 1.8 million, and the tenth highest number of deaths, with just over 50,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
