A vaccination fall guy?

The calls for his resignation (and others) have been made ever since

Andrew EdePalma02/03/2021 12:05

UNTIL recently I doubt that anyone outside of health service circles would have known who Carlos Villafáfila was. The coordinator of the vaccination programme in the Balearics, he became known as he and others had apparently jumped the vaccination queue.
There is no denying that this looked extremely bad.

His position immediately looked untenable. But there was an explanation. He had received a dose on the first day of the programme, at a time when there was “experimentation” (as has been admitted) with spare daily doses. It wasn’t much of an explanation as it might have been expected that he - as coordinator - would have ensured that there was no need for experimentation.

The calls for his resignation (and others) have been made ever since. Last week, he was either dismissed or he was on extended sick leave. There is a replacement, yet the director IB-Salut insisted that he was on leave. It can’t be both. Juli Fuster needs to be clearer, while he also needs to ask himself if Villafáfila has been hung out to dry.

Because it looked so bad, there wasn’t much defence. Nevertheless, PSOE, who control the health service, were faced with a parliament vote on setting up a commission of inquiry into the affair. Their government partners were demanding one.

Més, for their part, now say they will vote against. So, is Villafáfila something of a fall guy to prevent further division between the government “pact”?
However one looks at this affair, it leaves a bad taste.