The nations of the European Union launched a coordinated effort on Sunday to administer the COVID-19 vaccine to the most vulnerable among the bloc’s nearly 450 million inhabitants, marking a moment of hope in the continent’s battle against the worst crisis in public health in a century.
Healthcare workers, the elderly, and top politicians received some of the first injections in the 27-nation bloc to assure the public that vaccines are safe and represent the best chance to emerge from the pandemic.
“It didn’t hurt at all,” said Mihaela Anghel, a nurse at the Matei Bals Institute in Bucharest, who was the first person to receive the vaccine in Romania. “Open your eyes and get the vaccine.” In Rome, five doctors and nurses dressed in white coats sat in a semicircle at the Spallanzani infectious disease hospital to receive their doses.
“The message is one of hope, trust and an invitation to share this choice,” said one of the recipients, Dr. Maria Rosaria Capobianchi, who heads the Spallanzani virology laboratory and was part of the team that isolated the virus in early 2000. February. “There is no reason to worry.” Italian virus czar Domenico Arcuri said it was significant that the first doses of the vaccine from Italy were administered in Spallanzani, where a Chinese couple visiting Wuhan tested positive in January and became the first confirmed cases in Italy. Only later would northern Lombardy become the epicenter of the outbreak in Europe. Italy now has the worst confirmed virus death toll on the continent at nearly 72,000.
“Today is a beautiful and symbolic day: all the citizens of Europe together are beginning to receive their vaccinations, the first ray of light after a long night,” Arcuri told reporters outside the hospital.
But he warned: “We all have to remain prudent, cautious and responsible. We still have a long way to go, but we finally see a little light ”. The vaccines, developed by Germany’s BioNTech and US drugmaker Pfizer, began arriving in super-cold containers at EU hospitals on Friday from a factory in Belgium.
At the Los Olmos nursing home in the Spanish city of Guadalajara, northeast of Madrid, a 96-year-old resident and a caregiver were the first Spaniards to receive the vaccine.
“Let’s see if we can all behave and make this virus disappear,” said Araceli Hidalgo, the elderly resident, after receiving her injection.
The Czech Republic escaped the worst of the pandemic in the spring only to see its health care system on the brink of collapse in the fall. In Prague, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis was shot at dawn on Sunday and said: “There is nothing to worry about.” Sitting next to him in a wheelchair was World War II veteran Emilie Repikova, who also received the injection.
In total, the 27 nations of the EU have recorded at least 16 million coronavirus infections and more than 336,000 deaths, huge numbers that experts still agree to underestimate the true number of victims of the pandemic due to missing cases and limited evidence.
Everyone who receives injections will need to return in three weeks for a second dose.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen posted a video on Saturday celebrating the launch of the vaccine, calling it “a moving moment of unity.” The vaccination campaign should ease the frustrations that were building up, especially in Germany, as Britain, Canada and the United States began their inoculation programs with the same vaccine weeks earlier.
As it turned out, some EU immunizations started a day earlier in Germany, Hungary and Slovakia. The operator of a German nursing home where dozens of people were vaccinated on Saturday, including a 101-year-old woman, said “every day we wait is one day too many.” Each EU country is deciding for itself who will get the first vaccinations, with most promising to put the elderly and residents in nursing homes first.
EU leaders are counting on the launch of the vaccine to help the bloc project a sense of unity in a complex life-saving mission after it faced a difficult year in negotiating a post-Brexit trade deal with Britain.
“It’s here, the good news at Christmas,” said German Health Minister Jens Spahn. “This vaccine is the decisive key to ending this pandemic … it is the key to recovering our lives.” Among the politicians who planned to receive vaccines against the virus on Sunday to promote wider acceptance of the vaccines were Slovak President Zuzana Caputova and Bulgarian Health Minister Kostadin Angelov.
Meanwhile, France and Spain have seen the first cases of a new variant of the virus that has spread rapidly through London and southern England. The new variant, which according to the British authorities is transmitted much more easily, has caused European countries, the United States and China to impose new restrictions on the travel of people from Great Britain.
Japan became the latest country to act, announcing that it would temporarily ban all non-resident foreigners until January 31 as a precaution against the new UK variant.
Germany’s BioNTech has said it is confident its coronavirus vaccine will work against the new UK variant, but added that more studies are needed to be completely sure.
The European Medicines Agency will consider on January 6 to approve a second coronavirus vaccine, this one from Moderna, which is already being used in the United States.
(This story was posted from a cable agency feed with no text changes. Only the title was changed.)
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