BARCELONA, Spain (AP) – A judge in northwestern Spain has rejected a family’s objections and decided to allow health authorities to administer a coronavirus vaccine to a disabled woman in a nursing home.
The case appears to be the first known case of a court in Europe requiring anyone to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The Spanish government has repeatedly stressed that shootings would be voluntary, as would authorities in other European countries.
In a ruling seen by The Associated Press on Wednesday, a judge in the autonomous community of Galicia in the court recently ruled in favor of a request by a nursing home to ignore the refusal of the elderly resident’s family and continue to give her the vaccine.
The resident regarded the medical staff at the nursing home as a cognitive loss to the extent that she was ‘incompetent to give valid consent’, according to the ruling.
Judge Javier Fraga Mandián said the court had a legal obligation to intervene to protect the health of the woman. He said his decision was not based on the well-being of other residents, but that the “existence of tens of thousands of deaths” due to the virus in Spain provided irrefutable proof that the vaccination of the vaccine was more dangerous than any possible side effects. .
The company that runs the old age home, DomusVi, told the AP via its PR agency that out of all the homes it manages throughout Spain, the only case is that a family does not want to vaccinate a resident who is considered incompetent are not decisions about personal health.
DomusVi said that 98% of the 15,000 residents in its nursing homes in the country agreed to receive the vaccine. The remaining 2% are said to have refused to be vaccinated, but unlike the woman, they are deemed fit to make their own health decisions.
DomusVi said the court is intervening in the interest of the health of all the workers and residents at the nursing home residents and workers at the Galicia plant.
Spain has administered more than 581,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine since it was approved by the European Union in late December. Spain will also roll out its first groups with the Moderna vaccine.
Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Thursday that Spain sees a very low rejection of the vaccine, almost anecdotally. ‘
Nursing homes in Spain and across Europe have been devastated by the coronavirus, which is spreading rapidly among the elderly and individuals weakened by existing medical conditions. It is estimated that more than 25,000 people with COVID-19 have died in Spanish nursing homes since the start of the pandemic.
Other court cases regarding the non-voluntary administration of vaccines may be imminent.
In southern Spain, a state prosecutor recently said that family members who act as legal guardians for disabled residents of nursing homes could lose their guardianship if they do not give permission for their family members to be vaccinated.
The Italian government last week approved explicitly authorizing hospital heads and individual doctors to give vaccinations on behalf of patients who are unable to do so themselves, including residents of nursing homes who are disabled and without a guardian to give permission.
The procedure requires doctors to submit written documentation to a judge, who has 48 hours to approve or deny the request.
Although nearly a dozen European countries have mandatory vaccination laws for diseases such as polio, measles and diphtheria. The laws are rarely enforced by the courts, although a Belgian court fined two sets of parents in 2008 and sentenced them to five months in prison for failing to vaccinate their children against polio.
Unlike the COVID-19 vaccines, which are still technically considered experimental, the vaccines required by law in Europe are established vaccines that have been used for decades.
The World Health Organization has previously said it does not recommend making coronavirus vaccination compulsory, for fear it could undermine public confidence in the available vaccines.
At a press conference last month, dr. Kate O’Brien, who heads the vaccination division of the WTO, said it would be better if countries created a positive environment for vaccination as opposed to the mandates. But O’Brien acknowledged that in some high-risk environments, such as hospitals, it may make sense to require staff members and patients to receive vaccinations.
Some ethicists have said that the court’s decision to order the woman’s vaccination was probably justified by her high risk for COVID-19, as she lives in a parental home.
“The court must look at the preponderance of probabilities, and if the woman is elderly, she is at a much greater risk of dying from COVID than from an adverse event with a low probability,” said Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Center for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford.
He said the state, even in countries where there are no mandatory vaccination laws, is obliged to protect people when those who make decisions on their behalf may not act in their best interests.
“If you do not vaccinate this woman and she dies of COVID, people will say, ‘Why did you not protect her? ‘, Savulescu said.
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Maria Cheng reports from Toronto. Nicole Winfield of Rome and Aritz Parra of Madrid contributed to this story.
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