Germany and Hungary began applying the first coronavirus vaccines on Saturday, just hours after receiving their first doses, ahead of the European Union’s plans for a coordinated launch across the bloc’s 27 countries.
“Every day we wait is an extra day,” said Tobias Krueger, the manager of a nursing home where the vaccinations started on Saturday in Halberstadt, in the north-east German region of Saxony-Anhalt.
The first person in the household to be immunized with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was Edith Kwoizalla, 101, the dpa news agency reported.
Krueger said 40 of the house’s 59 residents wanted the vaccination, along with 10 of the 40 workers. He was one of the immunized.
In Hungary, several health workers were vaccinated at Pest South Central Hospital in Budapest, while Slovak authorities also planned to administer their first doses on Saturday evening.
Shipments of coronavirus vaccines reached warehouses in the European Union on Friday and early Saturday after leaving a factory in Belgium for Christmas. Authorities said the first injections would be given to the most vulnerable people until Sunday, as part of a coordinated effort across the EU.
The launch marks a moment of hope for a region that includes some of the areas where the virus emerged most strongly in the world, such as Italy and Spain, and others, such as the Czech Republic, that have been spared the worst from the start. that saw the worst blows to their health care systems until the boreal fall.
Consequence
In total, the 27 EU member states have registered at least 16 million cases of coronavirus and more than 336,000 deaths.
The division is the result of coordination by the 27 member states, which helps the bloc to also radiate a sense of unity in a mission of logistical complexity to save lives after the difficulties of negotiating and reaching a trade agreement on the latter moment. post-Brexit with Great Britain.
“This is the good news for Christmas,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn told a news conference on Saturday. “At the moment trucks are driving across Europe, Germany and their regions to deliver the first vaccine. More deliveries will follow the day after tomorrow. This vaccine is the decisive key to ending this pandemic ”.
“It’s the key to getting our lives back,” stressed Spahn.
However, first injections are limited to just under 10,000 doses in most countries and massive vaccination programs are expected to begin until January. Each country will decide who gets the first vaccines, but they all put the most vulnerable first.
The French authorities said they will give preference to the elderly, based on the high impact among older people of the previous outbreaks in France. The French Medical Safety Office will monitor potential problems.
Spanish authorities reported on Saturday that the first shipment of the coronavirus vaccine has arrived at a Pfizer warehouse in the city of Guadalajara, in central Spain.
The government said it had arrived in a truck transporting the vaccine from Belgium. It’s the first part of what the authorities said: weekly shipments of an average of 350,000 doses.
The first vaccines will be administered Sunday morning at a retirement home in Guadalajara.
Spain plans to receive more than 4.5 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine in the next 12 weeks, enough to inoculate just over 2.2 million people. It is the first phase of a national vaccination plan.