The Pfizer BioNTech, Modern American, Chinese Sinopharm and Russian Sputnik V vaccines are vaccines that are already in use in at least 30 countries around the world. There are three Latin American countries that were the first.
Costa Rica, Mexico and Chile are not only among the more than 30 countries in the world that have started their COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, but they are the first three to adopt immunization in Latin America that prioritizes people with high risk of a contract. the virus and health workers.
The first vaccines arrive after months of uncertainty, incarceration – which still continues – and strict health protocols being implemented to try to contain the world’s epidemic that will have more than 80 million infected and more than 1.7 million dead by 2020 abandoned. .
China, where the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated, was the first country in the world to initiate vaccination, reserved for those most at risk. Thus, more than a million experimental doses made in that country have been injected into that area, according to a report from Infobae.
In this photo taken on December 14, 2020, a medical employee shows a bottle containing the Sputnik V (Gam-COVID-Vac) vaccine against the coronavirus disease. Photo / AFP
China was followed by Russia, which started using Sputnik V, the vaccine developed by the Russian National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology Gamaleya, on December 5. Workers at risk were the ones immunized.
Meanwhile, on December 8, the UK began the campaign with the vaccine developed by the US-German alliance Pfizer-BioNTech.
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Canada and the United States launched the app on December 14. Later Switzerland on the 23rd and Serbia on the 24th, all with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
It should be noted that the United States and Canada are also the first two countries to be licensed for the modern American vaccine.
The United Arab Emirates launched their campaign with Chinese Sinopharm doses, which kicked off December 14 in Abu Dhabi, the capital. Also in the Emirates, Dubai began vaccinating with doses of Pfizer-BioNTech on December 23.
Saudi Arabia and Bahrain started their campaign on December 17, Israel on December 19, Qatar on 23, Kuwait on 24. Meanwhile, Oman started their campaign this Sunday. All these countries initially chose Pfizer-BioNTech; but Bahrain also injected doses of Sinopharm.
In Latin America, Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica, their campaign began on December 24 with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.
Doña Elizabeth Castillo, 91, is the first person in Costa Rica to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Photo @CarlosAlvQ
The first doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine arrived in the member states of the European Union last weekend, accompanied by security forces.
Germany, Hungary and Slovakia have already vaccinated a number of people on Saturday. Numerically speaking, Europe is the region of the world most affected by this pandemic and has already had more than 25 million cases and 546,000 deaths.
In Germany, Health Minister Jens Spahn expressed discomfort about the vaccination of nursing home residents on Saturday, a day before the official start of the campaign, making a 101-year-old woman the first German vaccinated. .
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Countries such as Italy and Spain started vaccinating their populations against the corona virus on Sunday.
“It does nothing, nothing (…) thank you very much,” said Araceli Hidalgo Sánchez, a 96-year-old slender woman who became the first Spanish woman to receive the long-awaited injection, in a retirement home in Guadalajara (center).
Around the same time, nurse Claudia Alivernini and Maria Rosaria Capobianchi, director of a virology lab at Spallanzani Hospital in Rome, in Italy, were the first to receive the vaccine in the country. In Italy, the general vaccination starts on January 8.
Thousands of miles away, in Bucharest, 26-year-old Romanian nurse Mihaela Anghel, the first to treat a patient in the country with COVID-19 in February, was the first to be vaccinated.
In France, Mauricette, a 78-year-old housewife, was the first to receive the first dose. “I’m excited, it’s an honor,” said the old woman, who lives in a center in Sevran, on the outskirts of Paris, through tears, adding, “It’s hot,” a comment that evoked laughter and applause. provoked the hospital staff.
Health workers applaud Mauricette, a 78-year-old French woman, after receiving the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at Rene-Muret hospital in Sevran, outside Paris, on December 27, 2020. Photo / AFP
In Austria, the first vaccinated in Vienna, an 84-year-old woman, declared to the public broadcaster ORF her wish to “see children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren again without any problems.
In Poland, a nurse was the first to be vaccinated in a welfare center by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Warsaw. In Croatia, it was an 81-year-old woman who lived in the Tresnevka nursing home in Zagreb and happily declared: “The vaccine arrived earlier than we expected and now we have to accept it all for our friends, our families and ourselves.” While vaccination started in Slovenian nursing homes.
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In Greece, Esfstathia Kampisiuli was the first to receive the dose, a nurse in the intensive care unit at Evangelismos Hospital. “Today is a historic day, it is the start of a new stage. I am lucky to be the first person in Greece to be vaccinated. I think a lot of people are jealous of me these days, ”he said.
In Bulgaria, Health Minister Kostadin Angelov and Orthodox Bishop Tihon were the first citizens of the country to be immunized, while Lithuania began its medical workforce.
In Portugal, António Sarmento, director of the Infectious Diseases Department of the São João Hospital in Porto and the first inoculate, showed his confidence, as “the studies showed that the responses are comparable to those of other viral vaccines”.
Dr. António Sarmento will receive a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at Sao Joao Hospital in Porto on December 27, 2020. Photo / AFP
Sweden, the first dose was injected into a 91-year-old woman from a nursing home in Mjölby, a small town between Stockholm and Gothenburg, while in Denmark a 79-year-old man was assigned to live in a nursing home in Odense, who humorously said: “Let’s hope it works.”
Belgium will start the vaccination campaign until Monday, just like Luxembourg, while the Netherlands will send the first reports on January 4.
In Argentina, the vaccination campaign will start on Tuesday with 300,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine from the Russian laboratory Gamelaya. It is the first country in Latin America to allow this vaccine. Argentina also approved the Pfizer / BioNTech formula.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused at least 1,758,026 deaths worldwide since the WHO office in China reported the occurrence of the disease in December 2019, according to a balance sheet established by AFP last Sunday from official sources. .
Since the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, more than 80,264,840 people have contracted the disease. At least 50,548,400 of these have been recovered, according to the authorities.
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