Spain rules incapacitated pensioner must have vaccine despite family’s refusal

A nurse prepares the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for residents at Icaria nursing home in Barcelona

Credit: Emilio Morenatti /AP

A court in Spain has ordered that an 84-year-old care home resident who is mentally incapacitated must be vaccinated against Covid-19, even though her family have not consented to the jab because they fear it may have adverse side-effects.

In the first case of its kind to be judged during the Covid vaccination rollout across Spain, a judge in Santiago de Compostela said that the “low risk” of the vaccine harming the woman’s health was outweighed by the dangers of remaining exposed to infection.

The DomusVi San Lázaro care home, where the 84-year-old is resident, brought the case to the court in an attempt to overturn the refusal by the woman’s daughter — her legal guardian — to consent to the administration of the Pfizer vaccine.

A medical report confirmed to the court that the woman was incapable of taking the decision herself due to an advanced state of dementia that prevented “even minimal participation in the decision on the desirability or otherwise of being vaccinated”.

The woman’s daughter told the judge it was hard to make a decision on her mother’s behalf, but that she and her siblings had decided they did not wish her to receive the vaccine due to fears that it would have negative side-effects.

Judge Javier Fraga acknowledged that treatment with a pharmaceutical product always entailed some risk for the patient but said the vaccine concerned had been approved for use by the relevant medical authorities.

“The epidemic is expanding and the risk to life is very significant. This is about balancing the two risks and opting for the lesser evil, which for an 84-year-old person means having the vaccination,” said Mr Fraga.

The judge also ruled that she must have the second jab in three weeks’ time unless a medical report specifically advises against it.

Prosecutors and courts are considering several similar cases across Spain, where a number of care homes have appealed to overturn relatives’ refusal to give consent to vaccination.

More than 20,000 residents of care homes across Spain have died from Covid-19, with excess death figures for 2020 suggesting a national total of 68,000 mortalities.

The official number of deaths from coronavirus is 52,683.