BERLIN • An unprecedented continent-wide vaccination campaign was under way in Europe yesterday, with Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, France and the Nordics all launching their inoculation programmes, less than a week after the EU cleared a shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
"Thank God," 96-year-old Araceli Hidalgo said as she became the first person in Spain to get the vaccine at her care home in Guadalajara, near the capital Madrid. "Let's see if we can make this virus go away."
The European Union began vaccinating against Covid-19 as members of the 27-nation bloc struggle with a rising death toll from the virus. Several European nations, including Germany, have imposed tougher curbs in an effort to contain a winter surge in infections and deaths.
It will take months to inoculate enough people to have an impact on the spread of the disease, but the sense of urgency has grown after neighbouring Britain locked down parts of the country, blaming a faster-spreading mutant strain.
"Once enough people have been vaccinated, we can start travelling, meeting our friends and family again, and have normal holidays, which we all long for," European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Saturday in a video message to mark "Delivery Day".
Europe is starting the campaign to inoculate its 450 million citizens weeks after Britain and the United States began their own vaccination programmes. More than 600,000 people in Britain and nearly two million in the US have received their first shot of the standard two-dose regimen.
Despite the agreed EU roll-out date, some nations - including Germany and Hungary - already began administering vaccines on Saturday, local media reported.
In the eastern German city of Halberstadt, a 101-year-old woman and around 40 others in a care home for the elderly were inoculated, according to DPA. "Every day we wait is a day too many," the news agency quoted the head of the home, Mr Tobias Krueger, as saying.
Italy and Portugal began their vaccination campaigns yesterday by inoculating healthcare workers, while in Denmark and Sweden, residents at elderly care centres received the first shots. Greece's President Katerina Sakellaropoulou and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis were vaccinated after the country gave the first shot to an intensive care unit nurse.
A 78-year-old woman living in a care home in Sevran, just outside Paris, was the first person to receive the immunisation in France, local media reported.
French President Emmanuel Macron celebrated the news with a tweet: "We have a new weapon against the virus: the vaccine. Continue to stick together."
The mutant variant of the virus has appeared in countries including Germany, Japan, Australia, Singapore and Italy. While that has spurred concern that testing, treatments and shots might not be as effective, officials at BioNTech and the European medicine regulator said they are optimistic the vaccine will work against the new strain.
The EU has ordered 200 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot on behalf of member states, with an option to obtain 100 million more, and the goal is to provide access to all countries at the same time on the basis of population size.
Supplies will be limited in the early days. The EU may have enough vaccine for two-thirds of its population in the middle of September next year, three months behind the US, according to London-based research firm Airfinity.
Meanwhile, Russia's President Vladimir Putin will receive the Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a Russian state TV channel yesterday.
BLOOMBERG, REUTERS
