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MADRID: Europe launched a massive vaccination campaign against COVID-19 on Sunday (December 27) with retirees and doctors lining up to receive the first vaccines to stop a pandemic that has paralyzed economies and claimed more than 1.7 millions of lives around the world.
“Thank God,” said Araceli Hidalgo, 96, as she became the first person in Spain to receive a vaccine at her nursing home in Guadalajara, near the capital, Madrid.
“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 lead the injection queue 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 is trying to catch up with the United States and Britain, which have already started vaccinating with the Pfizer injection.
The European Union must receive 12.5 million doses before the end of the year, enough to vaccinate 6.25 million people under the two-dose regimen. Companies are struggling to meet global demand and are aiming for 1.3 billion shots next year.
The bloc has secured contracts with a variety of drug makers in addition to Pfizer, including Moderna and AstraZeneca, for a total of more than two billion doses of vaccines and has set a goal for all adults to be inoculated by 2021.
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.
READ: AstraZeneca says the shot will be effective against the new COVID-19 variant
“We have a new weapon against the virus: the vaccine. We must stand firm, once again,” tweeted French President Emmanuel Macron, who tested positive for the coronavirus this month and came out of quarantine on Christmas Eve.
But Ireneusz Sikorski, 41, leaving church in Warsaw, the Polish capital, was skeptical.
“I don’t think there is a vaccine in history that has been tested so quickly,” he said. “I’m not saying vaccination shouldn’t be done. But I’m not going to test an unverified vaccine on my children or myself.”
COOLING CONCERNS
Injecting distribution presents great challenges, as the vaccine uses new mRNA technology and must be stored at around -70 degrees Celsius.
In Germany, the campaign faced delays in several cities after a temperature tracker showed that around 1,000 shots did not stay cool enough during transit.
BioNTech said that it was responsible for shipping to the 25 German distribution centers and that federal states and local authorities were responsible for shipping to vaccination centers and mobile vaccination teams.
“This is where the temperature variations occurred. We are in contact with many authorities to provide advice, however it is up to them how to proceed,” said a spokeswoman.
Pfizer’s injections used in Europe were shipped from its factory in Puurs, Belgium, in specially designed containers filled with dry ice. They can be stored for up to six months at Antarctic winter temperatures, or for five days between 2 degrees Celsius and 8 degrees Celsius, a type of refrigeration commonly available in hospitals.
In Italy, temporary solar-powered health care pavilions designed to resemble five-petal primrose flowers, a symbol of spring, sprouted in city squares as the vaccination campaign began.
Portugal has been establishing separate cold storage units for its Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores.
READ: COVID-19 variant detected in Madeira of Portugal in travelers from Great Britain
At the Santa María hospital in Lisbon, the Portuguese capital, Pedro Pires was waiting for an injection with other nurses at the end of a night shift.
“It has been exhausting,” he told Reuters.
Branka Anicic, an 81-year-old resident of a Zagreb nursing home, became the first person to receive a vaccine in Croatia. “I’m happy to be able to see my great-grandchildren,” he said.
German pilot Samy Kramer celebrated the vaccination campaign by tracing a giant syringe in the sky. It flew 200 km, following a syringe-shaped route that was featured on the flightradar24 website.
“FIRST MAN ON THE MOON”
The vaccination campaign is even more urgent due to concerns about new variants of the virus linked to a rapid expansion of cases in Great Britain and South Africa.
“We know that the pandemic will not simply disappear from today, but the vaccine is the beginning of the victory over the pandemic, the vaccine is a ‘game changer’,” said Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
Cases of the UK variant have been detected in Australia, Hong Kong and Europe, most recently in Sweden, France, Norway and the Portuguese island of Madeira. So far, scientists say there is no evidence to suggest that the vaccines developed will be less effective against the new variants.
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 give the injections.
READ: Despite high-tech advances, many Europeans are wary of injecting COVID-19
Beyond hospitals and residences, sports halls and convention centers that were left vacant by closure restrictions will become places of mass vaccination.
Vaccinations also started in Norway, which is not a member of the EU bloc.
“I feel like a historical figure … almost like the first man on the moon,” said 67-year-old nursing home resident Svein Andersen when he was hit by the country’s first shot in the capital Oslo.
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 throughout the region.
But even then, Hungary was ahead of the official launch on Saturday by administering gunfire to front-line workers in hospitals in the capital Budapest. The Netherlands said it will not start vaccinating until January 8.
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.
“We don’t want to waste that day when the vaccine loses its shelf life,” Karsten Fischer of the Harz district pandemic staff in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt told MDR broadcaster.
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