With the increase in Covid and flu cases in many parts of Spain before Christmas, and the impact of mass gatherings at Christmas and New Year yet to be added, the Valencian regional health department are now offering vaccinations without an appointment from Monday.

The Primary Care centres of the Valencian Community will administer flu and COVID-19 vaccines without an appointment starting on Monday, the 8th, with the aim of facilitating the immunisation of the population in the face of the current rebound in respiratory viruses.

This was announced by the Minister of Health, Marciano Gómez, at a press conference after the plenary session of the Consell, where he encouraged all Valencians to get vaccinated to protect both themselves and their environment.

In addition, the counsellor has highlighted that all children will be able to be vaccinated starting on Monday in Primary Care centres with a paediatric service (all health centres, except clinics), for which he has urged families to facilitate immunisation of minors.

The head of Health has detailed that, so far, medical teams have administered 1,035,089 doses of vaccine against the flu, 769,425 doses against the COVID-19 virus and 25,459 against the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Likewise, he also recalled that the Ministry of Health has adopted a series of special care measures in response to the rise in respiratory infections typical of this winter period.

Among these agreed measures is the adjustment of the programming of surgical activity in order to generate spaces to meet the demand, and depending on the context of each hospital centre, for greater efficiency of existing resources, as well as the reinforcement of templates.

Other measures are to promote, in these periods, home care services and establish the highest level of collaboration with the Department of Social Services, Equality and Housing, promoting home hospitalisation in nursing homes.

Finally, in the event that the collaboration of private resources is needed and, in order to reduce as much as possible any care tension that could be registered, a public-private collaboration framework will also be sought.

In addition, the Minister of Health, Marciano Gómez, announced that he will meet next week with the managers of the health departments of the Valencian Community to analyse the implementation of these measures.