The European Union (EU) has launched a campaign encouraging citizens to receive the coronavirus vaccine following the agency’s approval by the European Medicines Agency.
Like many other countries and territories, the EU will offer the vaccine first to the elderly and health workers. According to Reuters, it is expected to receive enough vaccine to inoculate 6.25 million people by the end of the year.
The EU has signed contracts with several vaccine manufacturers, including Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna, and aims to vaccinate all adults next year.
“We know that today is not the end of the pandemic, but it is the beginning of victory,” Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Sunday.
To combat reluctance to receive the vaccine, EU leaders present aggressive vaccination as a way to return to a pre-coronavirus status quo, according to the news service.
French President Emmanuel Macron
Emmanuel Jean-Michel Macron Macron now free of symptoms after testing positive for COVID-19 France slowly allowing UK passengers and freight to enter France to quickly access 700 front-line workers to gain citizenship as reward to risk MORE, who has recently recovered from a virus attack, tweeted that Europeans must “stand firm once more” during the drug launch.
We have a new weapon against the virus: the vaccine. Stay together, again.
– Emmanuel Macron
Skepticism about the vaccine has been particularly high in France, prompting officials to work to ensure the public does not feel compelled to take it, according to The Associated Press. Although the first vaccines in many other countries have been broadcast on television, France did not do so for the first inoculation in a nursing home, although it was broadcast elsewhere in Europe.
“It simply came to our notice then. She said “yes, I am prepared for anything to prevent this disease,” said Samir Tine, head of geriatric services at the residence, about the 78-year-old resident who received the first dose in France, according to the AP .