The Balearic Ministry for Health today announced that Mallorca has been upgraded from level one to level two as the number of Covid cases continues to rise and that Covid passports will now be required to access bars and cafés with a capacity for more than 50 people.
Until now, the passport had only been required to enter restaurants and nightclubs, however, the government yesterday extended the scheme.
However, amidst the talk of a “sixth wave” of the virus sweeping across the Balearics, the Minister for Health, Patricia Gómez, insisted on the effectiveness of the vaccine and the importance of booster.
The Minister was accompanied by the director of Assistència Sanitària, Maria Eugènia Carandell, who confirmed that some 8,000 new doses have been administered on the islands since the Covid passports were introduced in the Balearics.
The highest number in one day was 943 on Thursday (December 9), the passport having come into effect on Saturday (December 4). Since then, 4,514 first doses have been administered - an average of 645 per day. By way of comparison, for the same week in October, the average was 433.
While the current average is up notably, it is nothing like the daily rate was at its peak. The most first doses in one day were 11,127 on June 28. The rate began to level off at around 1,000 or so by September before falling further.
“The over-sixty age group is of most concern. In this age group there is a large group vaccinated with Astrazeneca, and this pharmaceutical company’s product has reported a decrease in its effect against Omicron.
“We still have few cases of this new variant in the islands, but they are on the rise, that said, the situtaion is under control," said the health minister, who considers it essential to “speed up the booster vaccination” to reach Christmas in a better epidemiological situation than at present.
This means that, if necessary, health centres will be opened for vaccinations, as has been done in the past. According to Gómez, more vaccination centres will be made available to the public, “closer to the homes of the people we want to reach”.