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Spanish medics take folding vaccination centre to rural areas

Locals receive a COVID-19 vaccine in a mobile medical station, in Oronoz-Mugaire

ORONOZ-MUGAIRE, Spain (Reuters) - As Spain widens its coronavirus vaccination campaign beyond nursing homes, health workers in northern Spain have deployed a mobile vaccination trailer that goes from village to village delivering shots to the elderly.

Once the white box the size of a shipping container is lowered from a truck, it takes a team of four people, medics included, to quickly unfold it to six times its original size.

As they worked in the village of Oronoz-Mugaire in the northern Basque region on Tuesday a small queue of locals formed outside for the shot.

"The purpose is to bring vaccination to the citizens and make things easier," said Diego Reyero, head of regional medical transport, which helped 15 local people with mobility problems in the village receive the vaccine.

"It is the simplest solution to administer their shots so they don't have to go far and don't fill medical centres," he added.

Faced with record infection rates in the wake of the Christmas holidays, Spain began giving second shots of coronavirus vaccines to elderly nursing home residents earlier this week.

(Reporting by Vincent West, writing by Andrei Khalip, Editing by Alexandra Hudson)