Warsaw, Poland (AP) – European Union countries officially launched a coordinated effort on Sunday to give COVID-19 vaccines to some of the most vulnerable among its nearly 450 million people, marking a moment of hope in the continent’s battle against the worst public health crisis in a century.
Shots were administered Sunday morning to health workers, the elderly and some prominent politicians to assure the public that the vaccines are safe.
In Prague, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis was shot in the morning and stated: “There is nothing to worry about.” In Rome, five doctors and nurses wearing white scrubs sat in a semicircle at Rome’s Spallanzani Infectious Diseases Hospital to receive their doses.
“Vaccination is an act of love and responsibility towards the whole community,” said Claudia Alivernini, a 29-year-old Spallanzani nurse, on the eve of being the first to be shot in Italy, which has the value of the European virus more than 71,000 deaths.
Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza, speaking outside the hospital, said the coordinated deployment of the EU was a sign of hope for the continent, but that people still could not lower their guard for a few more months. .
“We still have tough months ahead of us,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day, but we still have to be careful … this vaccine is the real way to close this tough season.”
The vaccines, developed by Germany’s BioNTech and US drug maker Pfizer, began arriving in super-cold containers at EU hospitals on Friday from a factory in Belgium. The EU has seen some of the hotspots of the world’s first and most affected viruses, including Italy and Spain.
Other EU countries, such as the Czech Republic, saved the worst at first only to see their health systems almost collapse in the autumn.
In total, the 27 EU nations have recorded at least 16 million coronavirus infections and more than 336,000 deaths, a huge number that experts still agree to underestimate the true number of pandemics due to lost cases and limited evidence.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen released a video on Saturday celebrating the launch of the vaccine and calling it “a touching moment of unity”.
The campaign should alleviate the frustrations that were accumulating, especially in Germany, as Britain, Canada and the United States began their inoculation programs with the same vaccine weeks earlier.
As it turned out, some EU vaccinations 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 “every day we wait is one day too many.”
Each country decides on its own who will get the first shots. Spain, France and Germany, among others, are committed to putting the elderly and residents in first homes first.
Poland also gives priority to doctors, nurses and others in the front line of fighting the virus. The Central European nation was largely spared from the rise that hit Western Europe in the spring, but this autumn has suffered high infections and daily deaths.
EU leaders are counting on the deployment of vaccines to help the bloc project a sense of unity in a complex life-saving mission after facing a year of difficulties in negotiating a post-Brexit trade deal with Britain.
“It’s here, the good news of Christmas,” said German Health Minister Jens Spahn. “This vaccine is the key to ending this pandemic … it’s the key to getting our lives back.”
Politicians who plan to shoot viruses on Sunday as a way to promote wider acceptance of vaccines include Slovak President Zuzana Caputova and Bulgarian Health Minister Kostadin Angelov.
Meanwhile, the first cases of a new virus variant that has spread rapidly through London and the south of England to France and Spain have now been detected. The new variant, which the British authorities said is much more easily transmitted, has caused European countries, the United States and China to put new restrictions on the travel of people from Britain.
German pharmaceutical company BioNTech is confident its coronavirus vaccine will work against the new UK variant, but said further studies are needed to be completely safe.
On January 6, the European Medicines Agency will consider approving a second coronavirus vaccine, this one from Moderna, which has already been approved for use in the United States.
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