WARSAW, Poland (AP) – European Union countries officially launched a coordinated effort on Sunday to give COVID-19 vaccines to some of the most vulnerable among its nearly 450 million inhabitants, marking a moment of hope in the continent’s battle against the worst public health crisis in a century.
The vaccines were administered on Sunday morning to health professionals, the elderly and some important politicians to assure the public that the vaccines are safe.
In Prague, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis received his injection at dawn and said: “There is nothing to worry about.” In Rome, five doctors and nurses wearing white scrubs sat in a semicircle at Rome’s Spallanzani infectious disease hospital to receive their doses.
“Being vaccinated is an act of love and responsibility towards the collective whole,” said Claudia Alivernini, a 29-year-old Spallanzani nurse, on the eve of being the first to receive the vaccine in Italy, a country that has a large number of viruses in Europe. Europe in more than 71,000 deaths.
Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza, speaking outside the hospital, said that coordinated EU implementation is a sign of hope for the continent, but that people still cannot let their guard down for a few more months.
“We still have difficult months ahead of us,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day, but we still need to be cautious … this vaccine is the real way to close this difficult season.”
The vaccines, developed by BioNTech in Germany and the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer, began arriving in super-cold containers at EU hospitals on Friday from a factory in Belgium. The EU saw some of the world’s first and most affected virus hotspots, including Italy and Spain.
Other EU countries, like the Czech Republic, were spared the worst at first, only to see their health systems close to collapse in the fall.
In all, the 27 EU nations recorded at least 16 million coronavirus infections and more than 336,000 deaths – huge numbers that experts still agree to underestimate the true number of the pandemic due to lost cases and limited testing.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen released a video on Saturday celebrating the launch of the vaccine, calling it “a touching moment of unity”.
The campaign is expected to alleviate the frustrations that were building up, especially in Germany, when Britain, Canada and the United States started their vaccination programs with the same vaccine weeks earlier.
As it turned out, some EU immunizations started the day before in Germany, Hungary and Slovakia. The operator of a German nursing home where dozens of people were vaccinated on Saturday, including a 101-year-old woman, said that “each day we hope for is too many days”.
Each country is deciding for itself who will be the first to shoot. Spain, France and Germany, among others, promise to put the elderly and residents in nursing homes first.
Poland is also prioritizing doctors, nurses and others on the front lines of the fight against the virus. The central European country was largely spared the sudden rise that hit Western Europe in the spring, but saw many daily infections and deaths this fall.
EU leaders are counting on the launch of the vaccine to help the bloc project a sense of unity on a complex rescue mission after facing a year of difficulties in negotiating a post-Brexit trade agreement with Britain.
“Here is the good news for Christmas,” said German Health Minister Jens Spahn. “This vaccine is the decisive key to ending this pandemic … it is the key to recovering our lives.”
Among politicians who plan to be vaccinated against the virus on Sunday as a way to promote wider acceptance of vaccines are Slovak President Zuzana Caputova and Bulgarian Health Minister Kostadin Angelov.
Meanwhile, the first cases of a new variant of the virus that spread rapidly across London and southern England were detected in France and Spain. The new variant, which British officials said was much easier to convey, has caused European countries, the United States and China to place new restrictions on travel by people in the UK.
German pharmaceutical company BioNTech is confident that its coronavirus vaccine works against the new variant in the UK, but said more studies are needed to be absolutely sure.
The European Medicines Agency will study on January 6 the approval of a second vaccine against coronavirus, this one from Moderna, which has already been approved for use in the United States.
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