Why can’t I make an appointment for the third dose of the vaccine if I am over 40 years old?

Catalonia has opened the vaccination of the third doses for the 40 to 49 age group at 12 noon this Wednesday. There have been many citizens who have quickly turned to the CatSalut website to make an appointment to get vaccinated. And many of them have been frustrated and without understanding anything when seeing, at the end of the process, the message that indicated: “You cannot make an appointment.” “Why, if I am 40 years old?”, “What happens? Does the web not work?”, Have been the questions that have been asked.

The answer has nothing to do with the CatSalut website. The web works. What prevents these people from making an appointment is that they do not 6 months from the date of the second vaccination. To receive the third dose of the covid vaccine, 6 months must have passed from the date of the second dose in the case of people vaccinated with Pfizer or Modern. For people vaccinated with AstraZeneca or Janssen, the period is 3 months.

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This also applies to all those citizens of other ages, for example over 50, who try to make an appointment these days without having passed that minimum period set by the health authorities in Spain to receive the third dose.

Technical considerations aside, the truth is that the expeditious message of “you cannot make an appointment”, without any other explanation, is what opens the door for citizens to wonder what is going on. Perhaps, if the message were more explanatory, such as “you cannot make an appointment because the required time has not passed since the second dose”, many would have saved scares and annoyances.