According to FEE, several provinces in Spain, including the autonomous Catalina region, have announced that they will no longer require vaccine passports for people to go out in public.

They are joining a growing number of countries that are winding down their COVID mandates.

But there is actually a very specific reason why these provinces are doing this.

It is due to a recent Spanish study that concluded COVID vaccines have little effect on the dominant Omicron strain.

FEE reports:

“Vaccinated cases seem to have the same transmission capacity as unvaccinated people,” researchers concluded, according to EITB Radio Televisión Pública Vasca (the Basque Autonomous Community’s public broadcast service).

This is a departure from the Delta variant, researchers said, where transmission differences were found in vaccinated households and workplaces.

The study was based on 622 Omicron cases (and their 1,420 contacts) detected in Cantabria, a region on Spain’s north coast, in December 2021.[…]

A committee of scientists told Catalonia’s regional government that because of the nature of Omicron, “a large part of the population is once again susceptible to getting infected whether or not they are vaccinated or have already had the illness.”

READ: Spain’s First Study on Omicron Finds Vaccinated People Spread COVID at Same Rate as Unvaccinated