Carolina Darias: the vaccination minister returns to her political origins

With her candidacy for mayor of Las Palmas, Carolina Darias —until today Minister of Health—, returns to her political origins. In that town hall she began as a councilor in 1999 and later held positions at all levels of the administration: she has been a deputy, president of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, government delegate and regional councilor for the Economy.

After just over two years in Health, she is the minister who has lasted the longest in this department in the Sánchez governments, who has already accumulated five headlines in her less than five years as president: Carmen Montón, María Luisa Carcedo, Salvador Illa, the Darias herself and José Manuel Miñones Conde, her replacement.

In the appearance before the press this Monday in which he announced the replacement, President Pedro Sánchez thanked him for his work: “The name of Carolina Darias will always be linked to the success of the vaccination campaign and it is fair to recognize her role in the strengthening public health”, said the socialist leader, who also highlighted that the outgoing minister “has launched the largest offer of MIR (resident doctors) places”.

The biggest health crisis

In January 2021, Darias, then head of Territorial Policy, took over from Salvador Illa, who was running as a candidate for the Generalitat of Catalonia and who was in charge of managing the toughest stage of the biggest public health crisis in recent history. The Canary Islands had a slightly less turbulent phase of the pandemic, but not without complications.

He landed in Health in the middle of the third wave of covid (the second deadliest), with the mission of continuing the recently started vaccination strategy and commanding an unprecedented massive immunization. To his credit remains the fulfillment of the commitment that the Government imposed on itself to vaccinate 70% of the population before the end of that summer, which had the complicity of the autonomous communities, health personnel and a citizenry dedicated to the cause.

A successful process in which there were also setbacks, such as the side effects of those of Astrazeneca and Janssen, which forced a change in the roadmap. The rationing of injections of the first months led to the abundance of today. Health has budgeted more than 2,000 million euros for vaccines in two years and half of those that have arrived are unused.

Along with vaccination, his main task has been to lead the country’s gradual return to normality after the pandemic. When Darias took office, Spain was in the third state of alarm for the pandemic (the second affected only Madrid). But this was different from the first, in which Illa enjoyed a power like the one that no minister had had to date. Darias’s task was to harmonize the measures that were being taken together with the autonomous communities in which they became famous Interterritorial Councils of the National Health System.

There, restrictions were gradually eliminated, something that had its culminating moment a year ago, when it was decided to end the strict covid surveillance strategy, which came to be considered, for practical purposes, as just another disease. The imposition of masks, regulated by law, was in his hand at all times, and which took its last step back in February, when they were no longer mandatory on public transport.

The canary leaves with several tasks to do. Perhaps the main one is the approval of a national tobacco strategy, which has been kept in a drawer for more than a year, despite the fact that it was a commitment from the beginning of the legislature to continue advancing in the reduction of smoking in Spain. In the sector they only find one explanation: the Government has not wanted to open a new front for debate and controversy, such as banning cigarettes on terraces. Neither has he had time to complete the creation of a Public Health Agency, whose birth could come before the end of the legislature if the deadlines are met. The most critical of Darias in the ministry reproach him for not having promoted “any new law that was not already in place.”