BUDAPEST / PARIS / MADRID (Reuters) – Hungary and Slovakia stole a march against their EU countries as they began vaccinating people against COVID-19 on Saturday, a day before implementation in several other countries, including France and Spain. as the pandemic increases the continent.
In Germany, a small number of people in a nursing home were inoculated on Saturday, a day before the official start of the country’s vaccination campaign.
Mass vaccination across the European Union, home to nearly 450 million people, would be a crucial step in ending a pandemic that has killed more than 1.7 million worldwide, paralyzed economies and destroyed businesses. and jobs.
Hungary administered the vaccine, developed jointly by Pfizer and BioNTech, to front-line workers at hospitals in Budapest, the capital, after receiving the first shipment of enough doses to inoculate 4,875 people. The first worker to receive the shot was Adrienne Kertesz, a doctor at Del-Pest Central Hospital.
Hungary has reported 315,362 cases of COVID-19 with 8,951 deaths. More than 6,000 people remain hospitalized with COVID-19, making it difficult for the Central European country’s care system.
“We are very happy that the vaccine is here,” said Zsuzsa and Antal Takacs, a couple aged 68 and 75, while playing table tennis in Budapest Park.
“We will get the vaccination because our daughter had a baby in France last month and we want to go see them. We don’t dare travel before we get the vaccine,” Zsuzsa said.
In Slovakia, Vladimir Krcmery, an infectious disease specialist and a member of the government’s Pandemic Commission, was the first person to receive the vaccine, followed by colleagues.
On Sunday, countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Spain will begin mass vaccinations, starting with health workers.
The distribution of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which was launched in Britain earlier this month, presents difficult challenges. The vaccine uses a new genetic technology of mRNA, which means that it must be stored at extremely low temperatures of about -80 degrees Celsius (-112 ° F).
NEW VARIANT IN FRANCE, SPAIN
France, which received the first shipment of the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Saturday, will begin administering it on Sunday in the Paris area and in the Burgundy-Franche-Comté region.
“We have 19,500 doses in total, which is equivalent to 3,900 vials. These doses will be stored in our freezer at less than 80 degrees Celsius and will be distributed to different nursing homes and hospitals, ”said Franck Huet, head of pharmaceuticals at the Paris Public Hospital System.
The French government expects to vaccinate around one million people in nursing homes during the months of January and February, and then between 14 and 15 million in the wider population between March and June.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was approved by the French medical regulator on Thursday.
France reported on Saturday only 3,093 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours, well below the more than 20,000 cases of each of the previous two days, figures not seen since Nov. 20. But the seven-day moving average of new daily cases, which standardizes the reporting of irregularities, is around a maximum of one month.
France has a total of 2,550,864 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the fifth highest in the world, while the death toll from COVID-19 is 62,573, the seventh highest.
In a worrying development, the Ministry of Health said on Friday that a man who had recently arrived from London had tested positive for a new variant of the virus that has spread rapidly to the south of England and is believed to be more infectious. On Saturday, Sweden also confirmed that it has detected the first case of the new variant in a UK traveler.
In Spain, health authorities in Madrid said on Saturday that they had confirmed four cases of the new variant of the virus, as the country received the first deliveries of the vaccine.
“Vaccination will begin tomorrow in Spain, coordinated with the rest of Europe,” Health Minister Salvador Illa wrote on Twitter. “This is the beginning of the end of the pandemic.”
The doses will be taken by air to the Spanish islands and the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, and by road to other regions of the country, where a total of about 50,000 people have died from the disease.
“THE WINDOW OF HOPE HAS OPENED”
Meanwhile, Germany said trucks were on their way to delivering the vaccine to nursing homes, which are the first to receive the vaccine with the official start of the vaccination campaign on Sunday.
However, a small number of people in Germany received the vaccine on Saturday, with the first 101-year-old woman in a residence in Halberstadt, in the Harz mountain range.
The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country rose by 14,455 to 1,627,103, data from the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases showed on Saturday. In all, more than 29,000 people have died.
The federal government plans to distribute more than 1.3 million doses of vaccine to local health authorities by the end of this year and about 700,000 weekly starting in January.
“There may be some hiccups at one time or another at first, but that’s pretty normal when you start such a logistically complex process,” Health Minister Jensen Spahn said.
In Portugal, a truck escorted by police left the first batch of COVID-19 blows in a warehouse in the central region of the country. From there, the nearly 10,000 shots will be delivered to five major hospitals.
“It’s a historic milestone for all of us, an important day after such a difficult year,” Health Minister Marta Temido told reporters in front of the warehouse.
“Now a window of hope has opened, not to mention that there is a very difficult struggle ahead.”
Reports by Anita Komuves in Budapest, Benoit Van Overstraeten in Paris and Isla Binnie in Madrid; Additional reports from Yiming Woo and Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris, Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt, Catarina Demony in Lisbon and Radovan Stoklasa in Nitra; Written by Pravin Char; Edited by Alexandra Hudson and Leslie Adler