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Germany began this Saturday to administer the first vaccines against Covid-19, a few hours after receiving the first shipments, contrary to the European Union (EU) plans for a coordinated implementation, which begins on Sunday.
After Hungary also began vaccination against Covid-19 this Saturday, the Associated Press (AP) reported that vaccines were also being administered in Germany, one day before the date set by the EU for all 27 states. -members.
“Every day we hope is another day,” said Tobias Krueger, a worker at a nursing home where he began vaccinating in Halberstadt, in the Saxony-Anhalt region of northeastern Germany.
The first person to be immunized with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was Edith Kwoizalla, 101, the German news agency DPA reported.
According to Tobias Krueger, 40 of the 59 nursing home patients wanted to get vaccinated, as did 10 of the approximately 40 workers.
In Hungary, doctors and health professionals started getting vaccinated today.
According to the Associated Press (AP), the reasons that led Hungary to start vaccination one day ahead of schedule are unknown for all EU member states, which received their first shipments of vaccines today and Friday.
Slovak authorities have also announced that they plan to start administering their first doses tonight.
In a video posted when the vaccine was launched, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called it “a moving moment of unity.”
“Today we begin to turn the page in a difficult year. The covid-19 vaccine has been distributed in all EU countries. Vaccination will start tomorrow [domingo] across the EU, ”the official said.
Hungary received its first shipment of 9,750 doses this morning, enough to vaccinate 4,875 people, since two doses are needed per person, which were then sent to the Central South Pest Hospital in Budapest.
The Hungarian government said four other hospitals, two in Budapest and others in the cities of Debrecen and Nyiregyhaza, will also receive vaccines from the first shipment.
Vaccines developed by BioNTech and Pfizer began arriving in EU countries on Friday, in trucks that guarantee extremely low temperatures, coming from a production center in Belgium.
The launch of the vaccine is the result of the coordination of the 27 EU Member States, also contributing to the projection of an image of unity, after difficult negotiations on a post-Brexit trade agreement with the United Kingdom.
However, the first doses are limited to just under 10,000 in most countries, and mass vaccination programs are scheduled to begin only in January.
The covid-19 pandemic caused at least 1,750,780 deaths as a result of more than 79.7 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected at the end of December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
In Europe, the highest number of fatalities is registered in Italy (71,359 deaths, plus 2 million cases), followed by the United Kingdom (70,195 deaths, more than 2.2 million cases), France (62,427 deaths and more than 2 , 5 million cases) and Spain (49,824 deaths, more than 1.8 million cases).
Portugal accounts for 6,556 deaths in 392,996 cases of infection.
MPE // MCL
Lusa / End
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