Spanish Mosques’ Vaccination Push Boosts COVID-19 Shot Uptake Among Muslims

"They were reluctant at the beginning of the process, but now they are the ones who receive the most first doses," Pilar Albás, nursing care coordinator at the Fraga health center, told Heraldo. In recent weeks, many Muslims have come to this health center to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. This change on the part of Muslims is the result of the awareness-raising operation carried out by certain mosques in Aragon to invite their faithful to get vaccinated.

To read: French Muslim Council Urges Mosques to Promote Covid-19 Vaccination Amid New Restrictions

The success of the operation led the Public Health to initiate a meeting with the imams of the mosques in Zaragoza to insist on the importance of the vaccine. "We ask you to raise awareness among the faithful during the Friday prayers so that they go and get vaccinated," the health officials stressed. The head of the Muslim community in Aragon, Fawad Nahhas, served as an interpreter for the occasion, translating the authorities’ call to the imams of Aragon.

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The awareness campaign has had immediate effects in some regions, and mixed results in others. "We have noticed that many Muslims working in the fields accepted to be inoculated with the Janssen vaccine at the beginning of the process," says Albás, who is pleased that today women and children are also coming to get vaccinated. "Many first doses have been administered these days," she affirms.

"There is a small group that is still reluctant," admits Nahhas for his part, specifying however that the vaccination rate of the Muslim community is appreciable, since "there are people who have gone to get vaccinated in their country of origin", and others in another health center.