Europe launches vaccines in an attempt to leave the pandemic behind

(Reuters) – Europe launches an unprecedented scale cross-border vaccination program on Sunday as part of efforts to end a COVID-19 pandemic that has affected economies and claimed more than 1.7 million lives worldwide.

The 450 million people region has signed contracts with a number of suppliers for more than two billion doses of vaccines and has set a target for all adults to be inoculated during 2021.

While Europe has some of the best-resourced health systems in the world, the scale of the effort means that some countries are calling on retired doctors to help, while others have loosened the rules about who can give the injections.

With surveys pointing to high levels of hesitation about the vaccine in countries from France to Poland, the leaders of the 27 countries in the European Union are promoting it as the best chance of returning to something like normal life next year.

“We are starting to turn the page in a difficult year,” said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the Brussels-based European Commission that coordinates the program, in a tweet.

“Vaccination is the long-term way out of the pandemic.”

After European governments were criticized for not working together to combat the spread of the virus in early 2020, the objective this time is to ensure that there is equal access to vaccines across the region.

But even so, on Saturday, Hungary accelerated the official launch by starting to administer injections of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech to frontline staff in hospitals in the capital Budapest.

Countries like France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Spain are planning to start mass vaccination, starting with health professionals on Sunday. Outside the EU, Britain, Switzerland and Serbia have already started in recent weeks.

The distribution of the Pfizer-BioNTech injection presents difficult challenges. The vaccine uses a new mRNA technology and should be stored at ultra-low temperatures of around -80 degrees Celsius (-112 ° F).

France, which received its first shipment of the two-dose vaccine on Saturday, will begin administering it in the Paris metropolitan area and the Burgundy-Franche-Comte region.

Germany, meanwhile, said trucks are on their way to deliver the vaccine to nursing homes, which are the first in line to receive the vaccine on Sunday.

In addition to hospitals and nursing homes, sports halls and convention centers emptied by blockade measures will become venues for mass vaccinations.

In Italy, temporary solar-powered health pavilions will appear in squares across the country, designed to look like five-petal evening primrose flowers, a symbol of spring.

In Spain, doses are being sent by air to the island territories and North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Portugal is establishing separate refrigeration units for the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira.

“A window of hope has now opened, without forgetting that there is a very difficult fight ahead,” Portuguese Health Minister Marta Temido told reporters.