Spain to compile list of residents who reject COVID-19 vaccine

A register of people who refuse COVID-19 vaccines in Spain will be created and shared with European nations, Salvador Illa, the country’s health minister, has said.

The BBC quoted the minister as saying the register will not be accessible to the public or to employers.

Illa reportedly said the register will be for those who were offered the COVID-19 vaccine but rejected it for “any reason”, adding that vaccination would be mandatory.

“What will be done is a register, which will be shared with our European partners… of those people who have been offered it and have simply rejected it,” he was quoted to have said.

“It is not a document which will be made public and it will be done with the utmost respect for data protection.

“People who are offered a therapy that they refuse for any reason, it will be noted in the register… that there is no error in the system, not to have given this person the possibility of being vaccinated.”

Spain is currently rolling out the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which was approved for EU member states, last week.

Illa said regional authorities will contact people when it is their turn to get vaccinated, adding that it is within the right of citizens to decide not to get vaccinated.

“We are going to try to solve doubts. Getting vaccinated saves lives, it is the way out of this pandemic,” he said.

“People who decide not to get vaccinated, which we think is a mistake, are within their rights.”

As of Monday, the number of people who have died from COVID-19 in Spain exceeded the 50,000 mark.

The figure was around 50,12 at the time of filing this report. There are 1,894,072 infections in the country, according to data collected from Worldometer, a platform that gathers statistics.