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Europe launched a mass vaccination campaign on Sunday with retirees and doctors lining up to take the first vaccines to curb the Covid-19 pandemic that has crippled economies and claimed more than 1.7 million lives around the world.
Thank God, “said Araceli Hidalgo, 96, when she became the first person in Spain to receive a vaccine. She told the staff at her residence in Guadalajara, near Madrid, that she had not felt anything.” Let’s see if we can. make this virus go away. “
In Italy, the first country in Europe to register a significant number of infections, 29-year-old nurse Claudia Alivernini was one of three medical staff to receive the first injections of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
“It is the beginning of the end … it was an exciting historical moment,” he said at the Spallanzani hospital in Rome.
The region of 450 million people has secured contracts with a variety of providers for more than two billion doses of vaccines and has set a goal for all adults to be vaccinated by 2021.
While Europe has some of the best-resourced healthcare systems in the world, the scale of the effort means that some countries are turning to retired doctors for help, while others have relaxed the rules on who can administer injections.
With polls pointing to high levels of vacillation in countries from France to Poland, European Union leaders from 27 countries are touting it as the best chance to get back to something like normal life next year.
“We are starting to turn the page in a difficult year,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission who coordinates the program, said in a tweet.
“Vaccination is the lasting way out of the pandemic.”
Jumped gun
After European governments were criticized for not working together to counter the spread of the virus in early 2020, the goal this time is to ensure that there is equal access to vaccines throughout the region.
But even then, Hungary was ahead of the official launch on Saturday by starting to give injections of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine to front-line workers at hospitals in the capital Budapest.
Slovakia also went ahead with some vaccinations for health workers on Saturday and in Germany, a small number of people in a nursing home were also vaccinated a day earlier.
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Kurt Klingseisen of the Curanum Seniorenresidenz nursing home receives the Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine from Dr. Katja Ruppert in Germering, Germany, on December 27, 2020, the day the country begins its vaccination program. Tobias Hase / Pool via Reuters
via REUTERS
“We don’t want to waste that day when the vaccine loses its shelf life. We want to use it immediately,” Karsten Fischer of the Harz district pandemic staff in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt told local broadcaster MDR. .
Pfizer-BioNTech injection distribution presents difficult challenges. The vaccine uses new mRNA technology and must be stored at ultra-low temperatures of approximately -70 degrees Celsius (-112 ° F).
Beyond the hospitals and residences, the sports halls and convention centers emptied by the closure measures will become places of mass vaccination.
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A nurse holds a vial with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Zeulenroda-Triebes, Thuringia, Germany on December 27, 2020, the day the country begins its vaccination program. Bodo Schackow / Pool via Reuters
via REUTERS
In Italy, temporary solar-powered health pavilions designed to resemble five-petal primrose flowers, a symbol of spring, have sprung up in city squares across the country.
In Spain, the doses were being sent by air to its island territories and the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Portugal is establishing separate cold rooms for its Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores.
“A window of hope has been opened, without forgetting that there is a very difficult fight ahead,” Portuguese Health Minister Marta Temido told reporters.
In the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Andrej Babis was at the head of the queue. In Vienna, three women and two men over the age of 80 received the vaccine in the presence of Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
“We are at war, but our weapon has arrived and it is in these little vials,” said the head of the Bulgarian anti-virus task force, General Ventsislav Mutafchiiski, after being vaccinated in Sofia.
Outside the EU, Britain, Switzerland and Serbia have already started vaccinating their citizens in recent weeks.
While the first delivery of the Covid-19 vaccine to Ireland will be administered to medical staff and some elderly patients at four acute care hospitals starting Wednesday, nearly two weeks before it is rolled out for vulnerable nursing home residents.
Reuters
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