(Reuters) – Europe launches an unprecedented 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 region of 450 million people has signed contracts with a number of suppliers for more than two billion doses of vaccine and has set a goal for all adults to be inoculated in 2021.
While Europe has some of the best health care resources in the world, the scale of the effort means that some countries are asking retirees to help, while others have weakened the rules for who is allowed to inject.
With polls indicating high levels of hesitation about the vaccine in countries from France to Poland, EU leaders in 27 countries are promoting it as the best chance to return to normal life next year.
“We are starting to turn the page in a difficult year,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission that coordinates the Brussels-based program, said in a tweet.
“Vaccination is the sustainable way out of the pandemic.”
After European governments were criticized for failing to work together to counter the spread of the virus in early 2020, the aim this time is to ensure equal access to vaccines throughout the region.
But even then, Hungary jumped on the official launch on Saturday, starting to administer the vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech to front-line workers in hospitals in the capital of Budapest.
Countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Spain plan to start mass vaccinations, starting with health workers on Sunday. Outside the EU, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Serbia have already started in recent weeks.
Photo sharing Pfizer-BioNTech presents tough challenges. The vaccine uses a new mRNA technology and should be stored at ultra low temperatures of approximately -80 degrees Celsius (-112 ° F).
France, which received its first transport of a two-dose vaccine on Saturday, will begin administering it in the greater Paris area and in the Burgundy-Franche-Comte region.
Meanwhile, Germany said the trucks were heading for the vaccine to be delivered to nursing homes, which will be the first to receive the vaccine on Sunday.
Beyond hospitals and nursing homes, gyms and convention centers emptied of blockade will become places of mass inoculation.
In Italy, temporary solar energy pavilions will spring in the markets of the country’s cities, designed to look like five-petalled spring flowers, a symbol of spring.
In Spain, the doses are delivered by air to the island territories and to the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Portugal is setting up separate refrigerated storage units for its Atlantic archipelagos in the Azores and Madeira.
“A window of hope has now opened, not to mention that there is still a very difficult fight,” Portuguese Health Minister Marta Temido told reporters.
Written by Mark John; Edited by Christina Fincher