The European Union (EU) has launched a campaign to encourage citizens to receive the coronavirus vaccine in the wake of the approval of the shot by the European Medicines Agency.
Like many other countries and regions, the EU will first offer the vaccine to the elderly and health professionals. According to Reuters, it will receive enough vaccine by the end of the year to inoculate 6.25 million people.
The EU has signed contracts with several vaccine manufacturers, including Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna, and aims to vaccinate all adults in the coming year.
“We know that today is not the end of the pandemic, but it is the beginning of victory,” Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Sunday.
To counter reluctance to get the vaccine, EU leaders are aggressively pitching vaccination as a way to return to a pre-coronavirus status quo, the news service said.
French President Emmanuel Macron
Emmanuel Jean-Michel Macron Macron is now symptom-free after positive test for COVID-19 France allowing passengers and cargo from UK to slowly enter France to accelerate 700 frontline workers to citizenship as a reward for risk MORE, who recently recovered from an attack with the virus, tweeted that Europeans must “once again stand firm” as the drugs roll out.
We have a new weapon against the virus: the vaccine. Keep each other back together.
– Emmanuel Macron
According to The Associated Press, skepticism about the vaccine is particularly high in France, prompting officials to ensure the public doesn’t see itself as compelled to take it. Although the first vaccinations of many other countries were televised, France did not for the first vaccination in a nursing home, although it was broadcast elsewhere in Europe.
‘We didn’t have to convince her. She said, “Yes, I’m ready to prevent this disease,” said Samir Tine, the nursing home’s chief of geriatric service, of the 78-year-old resident who received the first dose in France, according to the AP.