(Reuters) – Europe launches unprecedented cross-border vaccination program on Sunday as part of efforts to end a COVID-19 pandemic that has paralyzed economies and claimed more than 1.7 million lives worldwide the world.
The 450 million people region has secured contracts with several providers for more than two billion vaccine doses and a target has been set for all adults to be inoculated by 2021.
While Europe has some of the best endowed health systems in the world, the magnitude of the effort means that some countries are asking for help from retired doctors, while others have loosened the rules on who is allowed to do so. injections.
With polls pointing to high levels of hesitation towards the vaccine in countries from France to Poland, EU leaders from 27 countries are promoting it as the best opportunity to return to normal life next year.
“We are starting to turn the page in a difficult year,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the Brussels-based European Commission that coordinates the program, said in a tweet.
“Vaccination is the lasting way out of the pandemic.”
After criticizing European governments for not working together to combat the spread of the virus in early 2020, the aim this time is to ensure equal access to vaccines throughout the region.
But even then, Hungary on Saturday jumped the gun on the official launch when it began administering shots of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech to front-line workers at hospitals in the capital city of Budapest.
Countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Spain plan to begin mass vaccinations, starting on Sundays for health workers. Outside the EU, Britain, Switzerland and Serbia have already started in recent weeks.
The distribution of the Pfizer-BioNTech plan presents difficult challenges. The vaccine uses new mRNA technology and should be stored at extremely low temperatures of about -80 degrees Celsius (-112 ° F).
France, which received the first shipment of the two-dose vaccine on Saturday, will begin administering it in the Paris area and in the Burgundy-Franche-Comté region.
Meanwhile, Germany said trucks were on their way to delivering the vaccine to nursing homes, which are the first to receive the vaccine on Sunday.
Beyond hospitals and care homes, sports halls and convention centers emptied by closure measures will become sites of mass inoculations.
In Italy, temporary solar-powered health pavilions will spring up in squares across the country, designed to look like five-petalled primrose flowers, a symbol of spring.
In Spain, doses are offered by air in its island territories and in the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Portugal establishes separate refrigerated storage units for its Atlantic archipelagos in the Azores and Madeira.
“Now a window of hope has opened, not forgetting that there is a very difficult struggle ahead,” Portuguese Health Minister Marta Temido told reporters.
Written by Mark John; Edited by Christina Fincher