VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis said on Saturday that he planned to be vaccinated against COVID-19 next week and urged everyone to be shot, to protect not only their own lives, but those of others. .
“I think ethically everyone should get the vaccine,” the Pope said in an interview with Canale 5 television station. “It’s an ethical choice because you’re playing with your health, with your life, but you’re also playing with the lives of others ”.
The Vatican City, the smallest independent county in the world, home to some 450 people, including Pope Francis, has said it will soon launch its own coronavirus vaccination campaign.
“Next week,” the Pope said, “we will start doing it here, at the Vatican, and I have already booked it. We need to do it.”
Pope Francis, 84, had part of his lung removed during an illness when he was young in his native Argentina, making him potentially vulnerable to the disease.
The Vatican said last week that it hoped to receive enough doses of COVID-19 vaccine in the following days to inoculate all its residents and workers living beyond its walls in Rome.
As part of its vaccination plan, the Vatican said it had bought an ultra-cold refrigerator to store doses, suggesting it would use the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, which should be stored at about 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 degrees Celsius). Fahrenheit).
As excerpts from the interview were published, the official Vatican News website reported that the pope’s personal physician, Fabrizio Soccorsi, had died from complications of COVID-19.
Soccorsi, 78, was hospitalized and was being treated for cancer. Since 2015 he was the pope’s doctor.
Crispian Balmer Reports; Written by Giulio Piovaccari; Edited by Peter Graff and Chizu Nomiyama