Spain Creating Registry for Those Who Refuse COVID Vaccine

The government of Spain is creating a registry of those who are offered and refused to be inoculated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa made the revelation Monday during an interview with Spanish television channel La Sexta (The Sixth). He said vaccinations would not 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," Illa said, according to a translation by the BBC. "It is not a document which will be made public, and it will be done with the utmost respect for data protection."

Neither employers nor the general public will be allowed access to the database, Illa said according to Agence France-Presse.

"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 said.

Citizens will be alerted by regional authorities when the vaccine is available to them.

"People who decide not to get vaccinated, which we think is a mistake, are within their rights," he told reporters. "We are going to try to solve doubts. Getting vaccinated saves lives, it is the way out of this pandemic."

Spain, a country of more than 50 million, has the fifth-highest number of confirmed infections from the novel coronavirus in Europe, the fifth-most deaths, the 15^th-most number of infections per capita and 8th-most deaths per capita, according to Worldometers.info.

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