The former Health Minister in the Junts government, Josep Maria Argimon, presented a battery of WhatsApp messages that incriminate his predecessor in office, Alba Vergès, from ERC, in the judicial case opened for the delay in the vaccination of national police and guards civilians of Catalonia. This is stated in the documentation to which La Vanguardia has had access. A member of Vergès' cabinet sent an email to Argimon and Carmen Cabezas, then deputy director general of Health Promotion, in which he indicated that vaccination of the State Security Forces and Corps had to be stopped by order of the minister. “Once again, the councilor asks to stop the Civil Guard and National Police. We will not be able to argue it, we would have to stop it,” she wrote. And Cabezas responded: "you are in charge"
The messages were presented in May of this year but now after analyzing them, the Prosecutor's Office has requested to reopen the judicial case against Vergès and inform the TSJC, given the status of deputy of the former councilor who currently holds the position of vice president of the Parliament. The court had archived the case against the former councilor as it did not appreciate any “action or omission” that could be directly attributed to her in this case but ordered to continue the case against the health officials who supposedly made the decision: Josep Maria Argimón, Carmen Cabezas, the general secretary of Health, Marc Ramentol and the director of the Catalan Health Service, Adrià Comelles.
Argimón and Cabezas, both investigated in this case, decided to provide these emails and WhatsApp messages to disassociate themselves from the decision after the Secretary General of Health, Marc Ramentol, assured that the agreement to stop the vaccination of police and civil guards had been in a “collegiate, dialogued, debated and discussed” manner between himself, the councilor, Argimón and Comelles.
The investigation stems from a complaint filed by the unions and associations of the National Police and the Civil Guard JUCIL, JUPOL, SPP and AEGC for the delay in the vaccination of state agents, between February 10 and March 24, the date From which the Generalitat decided to immunize only police officers over 60 years of age due to the doubts that AstraZeneca raised for those under that age.
On March 24, 2021, 77% of Mossos agents, 68% of the Local Police and 77% of the Urban Guard had been vaccinated in Catalonia, compared to 2.9% of the Civil Guard and 3.6 % of the National Police, percentages that were only equaled when the TSJC ordered the Generalitat, on May 8, to immediately vaccinate state agents: in less than fifteen days almost 5,000 received their doses.
That day, the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System agreed to restart vaccination with AstraZeneca throughout Spain and extend the age limit for its administration to 65 years. On the afternoon of March 23, a member of Councilor Vergés' cabinet sent a WhatsApp to Cabezas, who in her capacity was responsible for the vaccination campaign, in which she said: "At the moment we have decided not to continue vaccinating the essential ones. Hello again, hehe. What do we do in relation to the GC and PN (in reference to the Civil Guard and National Police)? I think they should go with age criteria. How do you see it?" Cabezas replied: "I think we have to do them all, because otherwise there will be a problem of inequality with other Autonomous Communities and with other security forces and we will have to go to the centers more times to vaccinate them."
