Galicia overtakes Asturias as the Spanish community with the highest percentage of the population that has received the complete schedule of the vaccine against coronavirus. The latest data from Sergas of this same Thursday put the rate of the Galician community at 88.18%, compared to 86.3% of our neighbor, the northern border region. Waiting for the Ministry of Health to update the data as of January 20, last Wednesday the parameters of the government department already affected this surprise (85.8% of Galicia, compared to 85.5% of Asturias).
But if we take a look at the map by council, a large majority has more than 90% of its citizens inoculated with the prescribed doses against COVID-19. There are 42 localities that lower the Galician average, registering a percentage below that figure. Most of them are located in the health area of Vigo, and in Ourense, Verín and O Barco.
They are followed three municipalities whose adherence is low, even lower than the Spanish average (80.65%), since they are between 70 and 80% of the vaccinated population. Are The Lama (Pontevedra) with a percentage of 79.69%, and two municipalities in the province of Ourense: Avion, which reaches a percentage of 74.53% of neighbors inoculated, and Beariz, which reaches 74.08%. In Avión, a large part of the population is an emigrant, and anyone who is asked has family in the diaspora. Many of these citizens arrived last summer with the double guideline and their vaccination certificate, butIn the Sergas register they appear as unvaccinated.
There is only one municipality in the Galician Community that goes down to two more sections, with respect to the next least vaccinated. Thus, the vaccination timer does not record any locality with a percentage between 60 and 70 percent of registered citizens with a complete pattern. You have to go to rates below that 60% to find the stronghold of Galicia that most resists the vaccine: Negueira de Muñiz, in Lugo. This border town with Asturias and belonging to the region of A Fonsagrada registers 59.4% of the population with all doses administered. This means that four out of ten inhabitants of the least populated municipality in Galicia they have refused the puncture.
“We are a town of 225 registered residents, but who usually live here, around 130,” says the mayor of Negueira de Muñiz, Jose Manuel Brana. Although the socialist alderman acknowledges that the figures can be striking, “These translate into about 50 people who have not wanted to be vaccinated, and if we compare it with Madrid or Vigo, where there are thousands of anti-vaccines, the data is anecdotal,” he clarifies.
The alderman points to an “ultra-ecologist group that resides in the municipality, that has a very particular vital thought, more focused on nature, and that once came to town looking for natural freedom.”
Braña not consider that those fifty neighbors without immunity against COVID be deniers, “They just don’t think vaccines are necessary.” The alderman points to an “ultra-ecologist group that resides in the municipality, that has a very particular vital thought, more focused on nature, and that once came to town looking for natural freedom.”
The mayor refers to the famous ‘hippie’ commune of Ernes, which was formed in that rural environment at the end of the 1960s, “but, as a commune, the thing lasted 15 days,” he says. “Here there are no longer ‘hippies’, nor do they live in a commune. They are normal families, with children who go to school and who are vaccinated against other diseases, but in the case of the coronavirus, they do not trust and consider that they are bad”. An opinion you share Roi Agulla, a neighbor who came to Negueira from Madrid with his partner to open an artisan bakery. “It’s a mixture of fear, ignorance and beliefs”, assures this baker, who downplays the situation due to the almost non-existent epidemiological level of the place. “Of course we would love for them to be vaccinated, but it is worse to force people to do so,” he acknowledges.
“Here there are no longer ‘hippies’, nor do they live in a commune. They are normal families, with children who go to school and who are vaccinated against other diseases, but in the case of the coronavirus, they do not trust and consider that they are bad”
These heirs of those first inhabitants, who today subsist in a self-sufficient way, with the resources offered by the mountain, its animals and crafts, “They are above all, under 50 years old, most of them from abroad, with a different mentality, and who in their day sought tranquility in the town”, Explain Braña.
Those who have complied with the Sergas summons to be immunized in Negueira “are those over 70 years of age,” clarifies the mayor, who also confesses that these neighbors “They are somewhat uncomfortable having to live with people who have not been vaccinated, but we have no choice but to respect their decision, just as they respect ours. Now, you know that sooner or later, they are exposed to the bug.
In this sense, the town hall manager wants to make it clear that, regardless of these circumstances, “no one died here from COVID, and that I remember there were five positives, but none had to be hospitalized,” he says.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.