Spain will set up a registry of people who refuse to be vaccinated against the new coronavirus and share it with other European Union member states, although it will not be made public, Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Monday.
Illa however said the list would not be made accessible to the public or to employers.
During an interview with La Sexta television on Monday, the health minister reiterated that vaccination against the virus — which as in most EU nations began in Spain over the weekend — would not be mandatory.
Spain, one of the countries in Europe worst affected by the virus, is currently rolling out the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine which was approved for EU member states last week.
According to a recent poll, the number of Spanish citizens who have said they will not take the vaccine has fallen to 28% from 47% in November.
Illa expressed;
What will be done is a registry, which will be shared with our European partners… of those people who have been offered it and have simply rejected it.
It is not a document which will be made public and it will be done with the utmost respect for data protection.
He added;
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.
Illa expressed that the way to defeat the virus was “to vaccinate all of us – the more the better”, adding that people will be contacted by regional authorities when it was their turn to be inoculated.
He told reporters;
People who decide not to get vaccinated, which we think is a mistake, are within their rights.
We are going to try to solve doubts. Getting vaccinated saves lives, it is the way out of this pandemic.
The country has registered more than 1.8 million infections during the pandemic with over 50,000 deaths.
