Germany and Hungary began applying the first coronavirus vaccines on Saturday, just hours after receiving their first doses, one day ahead of the European Union’s plans for a coordinated launch in the 27 nations of the United States. block.
“Every day we look forward to is an extra day,” said Tobias Krueger, the operator of a nursing home where immunizations began on Saturday in Halberstadt, in the north-eastern German region of Saxony-Anhalt.
The first person in the home to be immunized with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was Edith Kwoizalla, 101, the dpa news agency reported.
Krueger said 40 of the 59 residents of the house wanted the vaccination along with 10 of the 40 workers. He was among the immunized.
In Hungary, several health workers were vaccinated at South Pest Central Hospital in Budapest, while Slovak authorities also planned to start administering their first doses on Saturday night.
Shipments of coronavirus vaccines reached warehouses across the European Union on Friday and Saturday morning after leaving a plant in Belgium before Christmas. Authorities said the first injections would be applied by Sunday to the most vulnerable people, as part of a coordinated EU-wide effort.
The launch marks a moment of hope for a region that includes some of the areas where the virus emerged most strongly in the world, such as Italy and Spain, and others, such as the Czech Republic, which were saved from the worst since principle and that until the boreal fall they saw the worst blows to their health care systems.
Impact
In total, the 27 EU member states have recorded at least 16 million cases of coronavirus and more than 336,000 deaths.
The distribution is the result of coordination by the 27 member states, which helps the bloc also project a sense of unity in a mission of logistical complexity to save lives after the difficulties of negotiating and arriving at the last minute a post-Brexit trade agreement with Britain.
“Here’s the good Christmas news,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn said at a news conference on Saturday. “Right now, trucks are underway across Europe, Germany and their regions, in order to deliver the first vaccine. More deliveries will follow tomorrow. This vaccine is the deciding key to ending this pandemic.”
“It’s the key to getting our lives back on track,” Spahn stressed.
Early injections, however, are limited to just under 10,000 doses in most countries, and mass vaccination programs are expected to begin by January. Each country will decide who will receive the first vaccines, but they are all putting the most vulnerable first.
French authorities said they will give priority to the elderly, given the high impact among the elderly of previous outbreaks in France. The French medical safety agency will monitor possible problems.
Spanish authorities reported on Saturday that the first shipment of the coronavirus vaccine arrived at a Pfizer warehouse in the city of Guadalajara, in central Spain.
The government said it arrived in a truck transporting the vaccine from Belgium. It is the first part of what the authorities noted will be weekly shipments of an average amount of 350,000 doses.
The first vaccines will be administered Sunday morning at a home for the elderly in Guadalajara.
Spain plans to receive more than 4.5 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine in the next 12 weeks, enough to inoculate just over 2.2 million people. It will represent the first phase of a nationwide vaccination plan.