Mass vaccination programs began to be implemented across Europe on Sunday, after several countries reported cases of a more contagious coronavirus variant.
In what some dubbed “V-Day”, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain started vaccinations, starting with healthcare professionals and those most at risk of contracting the disease.
The coordinated vaccination campaign on an unprecedented scale in the European Union, which is home to almost 450 million people, is a crucial step to contain the global pandemic.
In Italy, the first doses of the vaccine developed by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech were administered to five health professionals at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases Lazzaro Spallanzani in Rome, which has been at the forefront of the fight against Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.
“Today is finally a good day,” said the country’s virus secretary, Domenico Arcuri, at a news conference. “We see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
But he warned that people must “continue to be prudent, cautious and responsible”, as Italy, which recorded the highest number of deaths in Europe, at 72,000, still has a long way to go.
A total of 9,750 doses of the vaccine, which overcame regulatory hurdles in Europe earlier this week, have arrived in the country so far to be distributed in its 20 regions, the country’s health ministry said.
In all, the 27 EU nations recorded nearly 15 million coronavirus infections and more than 353,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Over 1.7 million died worldwide.
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Each EU country will make its own decision on who gets the first injections, with the majority promising to put the elderly and residents in nursing homes first.
France also started administering the vaccine on Sunday. The country’s Ministry of Health said it had ordered nearly 68 million doses of the EU’s two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, due between now and July.
The day before the official start of the vaccination campaign in Germany, a small number of people in a retirement home were vaccinated in a retirement home in the city of Halberstadt on Saturday.
Edith Kwoizalla, 101, received the first dose.
The federal government is planning to distribute more than 1.3 million doses of vaccine to local health officials by the end of this year, Germany’s Health Minister Jens Spahn tweeted earlier this week.
Hungary and Slovakia started vaccinating people on Saturday, the day before the general launch in Europe, while in the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Andrej Babis became the first person in the country to receive the vaccine on Sunday.
The first cases of a new variant of the virus that, according to British authorities, could be 70 percent more transmissible after being discovered in the United Kingdom, were detected in France, Ireland and Sweden over the weekend.
Fears about the new strain prompted China’s aviation regulator to suspend flights to and from the UK on Sunday until at least January 10. More than 40 countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Ireland and Japan have also imposed restrictions on UK travel.
BioNTech said it is confident that its coronavirus vaccine works against the new UK variant, but added that further studies are needed to be absolutely sure.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Nancy Ing, Ann-Kathrin Pohlers and Claudio Lavanga contributed.