Spain will keep a record of anyone who refuses to be injected with the coronavirus vaccine.

Spanish health minister Salvador Illa stated that the government will now keep a register of those who refuse to take the vaccine. These records won’t be made public and won’t be available to employers.

Spain is one of the worst affected countries in Europe. The country is currently in the process of rolling out the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine which was given approval for EU member states just last week.

On Monday, December 28, Illa gave an interview with La Sexta television in which he emphasized that although the vaccination will not be mandatory, the best way to defeat the virus would be to ‘vaccinate all of us – the more the better,’ BBC News reported.

“What will be done is a register, which will be shared with our European partners… of those people who have been offered it and have simply rejected it,” Illa explained. “It is not a document which will be made public and it will be done with the utmost respect for data protection.”

“People who are offered a therapy that they refuse for any reason, it will be noted in the register… that there is no error in the system, not to have given this person the possibility of being vaccinated,” he continued.

The number of coronavirus related deaths in the country rose above the 50,000 mark on December 28, with Spain having so far registered over 1.8 million infections over the course of the ongoing health crisis.