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Medical workers, nursing home residents and politicians will be vaccinated against the coronavirus across the European Union, as part of an effort by the 27 nations of the bloc to implement vaccines in a coordinated and equitable manner.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen posted a video celebrating the launch of the vaccine on Sunday (local time), calling it “a moving moment of unity” in the battle to protect the nearly 450 million people from the block the worst public health crisis in a century. .
Matthias Bein / AP
Dr. Bernhard Ellendt, right, injects the Covid-19 vaccine into Edith Kwoizalla, a 101-year-old nursing home resident in Halberstadt, Germany.
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 that “every day we wait is one day too many.”
The launch marks a moment of hope for a region that includes some of the world’s earliest and hardest hit virus hotspots, Italy and Spain, and others like the Czech Republic, which were spared earlier in the year just to see their systems. health care. close to collapse in the fall. It should also ease the frustrations that were building, especially in Germany, as Britain, Canada and the United States began their inoculation programs with the same vaccine weeks earlier.
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Vadim Ghirda / AP
The Romanian military is preparing to unload boxes containing the first batch of Covid-19 vaccines in Bucharest, Romania.
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.
The first shipments of the vaccine developed by Germany’s BioNTech and US pharmaceutical company Pfizer were limited to just under 10,000 doses in most EU countries, and their mass vaccination programs are expected to start only in January.
Each country decides for itself who will receive the first vaccines. Spain, France and Germany, among others, have pledged to give priority to the elderly and residents of nursing homes.
In Italy, which has the worst virus toll in Europe with more than 71,000 deaths, a nurse at Rome’s Spallanzani Hospital, the capital’s main infectious disease center, will be the first in the country to receive the vaccine, followed by another health personnel.
Poland is also prioritizing doctors, nurses and others on the front lines of the fight against the virus. The Central European nation was largely spared from the surge that hit Western Europe badly in the spring, but has been hit by a large number of daily infections and deaths this fall.
Szilard Koszticsak / AP
A health worker prepares a vaccine in Budapest, Hungary.
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.
“Here’s 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 planning to get vaccinated against the virus on Sunday, as a way to promote greater acceptance of the vaccines, are 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.
German pharmaceutical company BioNTech is confident that its coronavirus vaccine works against the new UK variant, but said 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 has already been approved for use in the United States.
