COVID UPDATE
The current State of Alarm ends in two weeks.
The central government has said that it will not seek to renew, since it is unlikely to obtain parliamentary approval.
That means that all travel restrictions within Spain will end.
Good news for the hotel industry, and for those of us who want to continue our travels around Spain.
At the same time Spain looks set to welcome UK visitors, but we wait to see how the UK government will respond.
Infection rates in most of Spain is under control, with very little sign of a 4th wave surge; the R number is just below 1.
The exception is Madrid and part of the Basque country.
21% of the population has received at least one dose of the vaccine.
The EU has stated that by July 70% of the population of the EU will have received a vaccine.
This is the same estimate as the Spanish Government has been reporting for some time.
What this means for Spain is that everyone over 25 will have received a vaccine.
Regarding the vaccines, the EU seems set on taking Astra Zeneca to court for not keeping to their contract.
It seems clear that the EU is set to cease use of the AZ vaccine.
When everyone over 60 has received this vaccine they have to decide whether or not to extend its use to other age groups.
Currently no news about how many Janssen vaccines are expected.
But the emphasis is clearly on the Pfizer vaccine for the long term, since they have ordered a very large number in the next 2 years, which will include versions for children and modified against two variants of the virus.
The EU has approved an expansion of the Pfizer factory in Belgium.
Pfizer are scheduled to produce 100 million vaccines each month, starting in may.
For Spain this will mean 10 million a month.
They are yet to decide whether to widen the gap between the doses to 8 weeks to speed up the coverage.
A rough estimate is that there are 25 million people over 25 who have not yet had a vaccine, so with the Janssen vaccine the target of July is very possible.
