In an interview with El Diario de Lanzarote, José Luis Aparicio, the director of Lanzarote’s Dr José Molina Orosa Hospital, has spoken of the Covid situation on the island.
In the interview, Aparacio said “We’ve fully vaccinated 104,000 people on Lanzarote, which is 75% of the target population. There are currently five people in the hospital: two on the normal ward and three in the intensive care unit. Of those, more than 80% are not vaccinated. I say more than 80% because the remaining patient has had just one dose of vaccine.”
Asked about priorities, he said “Our priorities have changed since the start of the pandemic. First the challenge was to get hold of protective equipment and PCR testing facilities; then it was to carry out testing and vaccinate people. Now we need to ensure that any further waves do not affect our normal activity in the hospital.”
Aparicio agreed that Covid was likely to become something we’d have to learn to live with, like flu. “Flu can also be fatal,” he said “But not as much as Covid,”.
He stated that those who refuse the vaccine have a negative influence on the services we can give to other patients. “There may be only three people in intensive care, but that’s a third of the unit’s capacity,” he said. “Those who don’t get vaccinated aren’t helping themselves or anyone else.”
Aparicio agreed that it wasn’t fair that the rest of us have to continue living with restrictions because of those who refuse to get vaccinated. “It shows a lack of solidarity,” he said. “But every person is an individual world, and we can’t force them to get vaccinated or take any other treatment. It’s not a big problem on Lanzarote, but those who refuse to get vaccinated are helping the virus to circulate; and when it circulates, there’s a higher chance that it will mutate into a strain that may be resistant to the vaccine.”
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