The Government calls the communities to order so that they do not decide on their own about vaccination

The Government has launched a notice to the autonomous communities this Wednesday after it was known that the Madrid Minister of Health, Enrique García Escudero, contacted on his own with suppliers of the Russian Sputnik vaccine and that his counterpart in Castilla y León, Verónica Casado , announce that they will stop dispensing AstraZeneca doses.

Both communities are chaired by the PP.

Vice President Carmen Calvo has been blunt: “The decisions of what vaccines, with what health criteria, what calendar ... correspond to the Interterritorial Council and that has been decided.

It does not correspond to any autonomous community in its way of understanding or its political formula to confront ”.

"That is the equality of all Spaniards: knowing that we are vaccinated with the vaccines that correspond to us for the age groups that correspond to us and as quickly as reality allows us," he added during an institutional visit to Extremadura.

The Junta de Castilla y León decided to preventively paralyze vaccination with AstraZeneca ―which is provided to children under 65 years of age and groups such as teachers or policemen― until the European Medicines Agency (EMA in its acronym in English) reassess the possible risks of thrombi associated with this serum.

The Ministry of Health wields the "precautionary principle that must govern the management of alarms and risks in any medicine" to suspend a process that was about to begin in several health centers and spaces enabled for mass immunizations.

The European Medicines Agency has assured this Wednesday afternoon that blood clots should be incorporated as "very rare side effects", but considers that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine remain "much greater" than the risks.

The Government of Castilla y León has not yet decided to resume vaccinations.

The Minister of Health has ensured that he communicated "early this morning" to the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, his decision and that she replied that it was her competence.

The health ministers of the European Union meet urgently from 6:00 p.m. to discuss this vaccine.

"Stop the vaccination!"

The news of the stoppage of the Anglo-Swedish serum surprised the personnel in charge of supplying the vaccines in the Castilian-Leon facilities enabled for it, such as the Miguel Delibes Cultural Center in Valladolid, where one of the nurses told EL PAÍS that when they were about to start with the injections heard the cry "Stop vaccination!"

"We were almost in position and suddenly they said: 'Stop, stop, stop," says this health company, which believes that these counter-orders "create fear" in the population.

"We'll see if the people who have been kicked out today come tomorrow to get vaccinated," he adds.

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• Castilla y León suspends the use of AstraZeneca: "Stop vaccination!"

So far, Castilla y León is the only community that has decided to suspend vaccination with AstraZeneca.

Spokespersons for the health ministries of Murcia, La Rioja, the Basque Country, Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha and Ceuta confirmed to this newspaper that they continued to vaccinate normally, waiting for what the EU vaccine group that was reviewing the possible relationship between the appearance of thrombi and the drug.

This risk has been considered, at least so far, much lower than that of not getting vaccinated.

The spokesman for the Spanish Society of Hospital Pharmacy, Jesús Sierra, explains that for every million doses given, one or two cases of thrombosis are observed, but that, in return, 120,000 infections, 4,100 hospital admissions and 800 deaths from covid would be avoided.

The Valencian Minister of Health, Ana Barceló, considers that it is not possible to act apart from the rest.

“You have to have responsibility.

They know that we have an [inter-territorial] council and coordinated actions, and the decisions that are adopted are for the entire territory and not autonomy, ”he stressed.

At the moment thousands of people are being vaccinated in more than 30 points in the Valencian Community, many of them with the AstraZeneca.

The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, does not consider suspending the vaccination with AstraZeneca: "The European Medicines Agency maintains that it is a safe vaccine, and we see no reason to make a different decision."

Neither does the Xunta de Galicia.

The Minister of Health, Julio García Comesaña, said that he had asked the ministry, and that, when he did not get an answer, he deduced "from this silence that there are no reasons to support the measure of Castilla y León."

"If there is any change, we will reconsider," he said.

"Eccentric performances"

The other open front is that of contacts with Russian suppliers of the Sputnik vaccine carried out behind the back of the Ministry of Health.

Calvo has described as "ridiculous" that a community negotiates "unilaterally" issues related to vaccines when the European Union itself defends that it is better for member states not to do so "on their own".

The Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, on Wednesday accused the Madrid president of "doing eccentric actions that were not going to crystallize at all."

"I think it's more of a pose by Isabel Díaz Ayuso in the middle of the electoral campaign," he said in RNE.

“Imagine that this had been done by the Generalitat of Catalonia.

The PP would have put his hands to his head ”, he added.

The Junta de Andalucía admits to having received offers from intermediaries, but without specifying them, and assures that, in any case, it has referred them to the Ministry of Health.

The vast majority of the autonomies - including the Valencian Community, which had asked the EU to streamline bureaucratic procedures if the EMA endorsed the Russian vaccine - deny parallel meetings and defend the EU's centralized strategy.

The Galician president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, rebuked, without expressly citing him, the Madrid government: "You cannot buy vaccines not authorized by the European Medicines Agency and without notifying the Interterritorial Health Council," he said.

For his part, the president of the Valencian Government, Ximo Puig, has once again justified the meeting with representatives of Janssen on the SER channel.

“We are absolutely in line with what the European Union says.

We are not negotiating anything, "said Puig, who has admitted that, after the meeting, he did not announce" anything new ", because the almost two million vaccines he spoke about are those that will reach the Valencian territory due to the proportional distribution per inhabitants signed between the European Union and Spain.

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced on Tuesday that in September 70% of the Spanish population (33 million people) will be immunized, according to the provisions of the vaccination plan.

With information from: Juan Navarro, Natalia Junquera, Ferran Bono, Manuel Ansede, Jessica Mouzo, Eva Saiz, Juan José Mateo, Emilio de Benito, Sonia Vizoso and Óscar Estaire.