WARSAW, Poland (AP) – The first shipments of coronavirus vaccines have arrived through the European Union as authorities prepared to deliver the first shots to the most vulnerable in a coordinated effort on Sunday.
The vaccines developed by BioNTech and Pfizer arrived by truck Friday and early Saturday in warehouses across the continent after being shipped from a production center in Belgium before Christmas.
The rollout marks a moment of hope for a region with some of the world’s earliest and hardest hit virus hotspots, including Italy and Spain, and others, such as the Czech Republic, spared the worst early on to see their health. care systems near their breakpoints in the fall.
In total, the 27 EU member states have seen at least 16 million cases of the coronavirus and more than 336,000 deaths.
“It’s here, the good news at Christmas,” said German Health Minister Jens Spahn at a news conference on Saturday. “Right now, there are trucks all over Europe, in Germany and its regions, to deliver the first vaccine. More deliveries will follow the day after tomorrow. This vaccine is the key to ending this pandemic. “
“It’s the key to getting our lives back,” said Spahn.
The rollout is the result of coordination by all 27 member states, which also allows the bloc to exude a sense of unity in a life-saving mission of logistical complexity following difficulties negotiating a post-Brexit trade deal. with Great Britain.
However, first doses are limited to just under 10,000 doses in most countries and mass vaccination programs are not expected to begin until January.
Each country decides who gets the first shots, but they all put the most vulnerable first.
French authorities said they will give preference to the elderly, based on the high impact on older populations during previous virus spikes in France. The French Medical Safety Office is monitoring any problems.
Germany, where the pandemic has claimed more than 30,000 lives, will start with people over 80 and those caring for vulnerable groups.
Spanish authorities said early on Saturday that the first batch of the coronavirus vaccine to reach the country had arrived in the central city of Guadalajara – where the first shots will be administered at a nursing home on Sunday morning.
A nurse in Rome at Spallanzani Hospital, the main infectious disease facility in Italy’s capital, should be the first in the country to receive the vaccine, followed by other health personnel.
In Poland, the first two people to be vaccinated on Sunday are a nurse and a doctor at the Interior Ministry hospital in Warsaw, the main coronavirus hospital in the capital, followed by medical staff in dozens of other hospitals.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki recently called it Poland’s patriotic duty to get vaccinated – a message addressed to a society where there is a high degree of hesitation about vaccines, stemming from a widespread mistrust of the authorities.
In Bulgaria, where suspicions are also running high, the first person to receive the shot is Health Minister Kostadin Angelov, who has pledged an aggressive campaign to promote the benefits of the shots.
In Croatia, where the first batch of 9,750 vaccines arrived early on Saturday, a nursing home in Zagreb, the capital, will be the first to receive the vaccine on Sunday morning, according to state HRT TV.
HRT TV also reported that authorities would launch a pro-vaccination campaign involving celebrities and other public figures getting the vaccine on camera.
“We have been waiting for this for a year now,” Romanian Prime Minister Florin Catu said Saturday after the first batch of the vaccine arrived at an army-run storage facility.
The vaccinations will start as the first cases of a new variant of the virus that has spread in the UK have now been discovered in France and Spain. The new variant has resulted in several European countries restricting traffic with Great Britain.
A French man living in England arrived in France on Dec. 19 and tested positive for the new variant on Friday, the French public health organization said in a statement. He has no symptoms and isolates in his home in the central city of Tours.
Meanwhile, health authorities in the Madrid region said they confirmed the variant in four people, all of whom are in good health. Enrique Ruiz Escudero, head of regional health, said the new species had arrived when an infected person flew to Madrid airport.
The German pharmaceutical company BioNTech is confident that his coronavirus vaccine works against the new British variant, but further studies are needed to be absolutely sure.
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Associated Press authors Lorne Cook in Brussels, David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, Angela Charlton in Paris, Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, Spain, Frances D’Emilio in Rome, Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia and Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria , contributed to this report.