(Reuters) – Europe is launching a cross-border vaccination program of unprecedented scale 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 region of 450 million people has contracts with a range of suppliers for more than two billion vaccine doses and has set a target for all adults to be vaccinated by 2021.
While Europe has some of the best-resourced healthcare systems in the world, the sheer magnitude of the efforts means that some countries are calling on retired physicians to help, while others have relaxed the rules on who can give the injections.
With studies pointing to major hesitations about the vaccine in countries from France to Poland, European Union leaders of 27 countries are promoting it as the best chance to return to something like normal life next year.
“We are starting to turn the page in a difficult year,” said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the Brussels-based European Commission coordinating the program, in a tweet.
“Vaccination is the permanent way out of the pandemic.”
After European governments have been criticized for failing to cooperate to stop the spread of the virus in early 2020, this time the goal is to ensure equal access to vaccines across the region.
But even then, Hungary jumped on the official rollout on Saturday by starting to administer injections of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech to front-line workers in hospitals in the capital Budapest.
Countries like France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Spain are planning to start mass vaccinations, starting with health workers on Sunday. Outside the EU, Great Britain, Switzerland and Serbia have already started in recent weeks.
The distribution of the Pfizer BioNTech recording is a major challenge. The vaccine uses new mRNA technology and should be stored at ultra-low temperatures of about -80 degrees Celsius (-112 ° F).
France, which received its first shipment of the two-dose vaccine on Saturday, will start administering it in the greater Paris area and in the Burgundy-Franche-Comte region.
Germany, meanwhile, said trucks were on their way to deliver the vaccine to care homes for the elderly, who are first in line to receive the vaccine on Sunday.
In addition to hospitals and nursing homes, sports halls and conference centers that are emptied by closure measures will become locations for mass vaccinations.
In Italy, solar-powered temporary care pavilions will appear in city squares across the country, designed to look like five-leaf primrose flowers, a symbol of spring.
In Spain, doses are delivered by air to the island regions and the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Portugal is building separate cold stores for its Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira.
“A window of hope has now opened, without forgetting that a very difficult battle is afoot,” Portuguese Health Minister Marta Temido told reporters.
Written by Mark John; Editing by Christina Fincher