Europe launches massive Covid-19 vaccination program as countries compete for new

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The pilot, Samy Kramer, invited people on his Instagram account to follow his flight, in a two-seater plane, on the FlightRadar24 website.

The air traffic monitoring site reported that the flight took off from Friedrichshafen, near Lake Constance in southern Germany, on December 23 and lasted one hour and 44 minutes.

The European Union (EU) officially launched its Covid-19 vaccination campaign on Sunday, days after the approval of the Pfizer / BioNTech coronavirus vaccine on December 21st.

“The vaccine has been delivered to all EU countries,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Twitter on Saturday.

The Commission declared 27, 28 and 29 December “Vaccination Days in the EU”, which von der Leyen said was “an emotional moment of unity”. She added: “Vaccination is the sustainable way out of the pandemic.”

The first people to receive vaccine doses were mostly elderly or front-line medical workers.

In France, a 78-year-old woman named Mauricette was the first to receive the vaccine, according to a tweet by Aurélien Rousseau, director general of the health agency in the Ile-de-France region. Mauricette, a former housekeeper, received the vaccine at a public hospital in the greater Paris area.

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Italy – once the European epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic – also received its first doses of vaccine on Sunday.

Professor Maria Rosaria Capobianchi, a virologist at the Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases, was one of the first to receive it. Capobianchi is part of the team that first isolated the virus in Italy.

Also among the first groups to receive jab were a doctor and a nurse.

Dr. Alessandra D’Abramo was working at the institute when the first two coronavirus patients in Italy – a Chinese couple – were hospitalized there on January 30th.

“This is a great day, because after a long time working in the ward, now is a day of hope and I’m so proud of it,” she told CNN shortly after receiving the injection. . “The vaccine is approved by the FDA, EMA and AIFA – Italian [regulator] “So I think it’s safe and effective,” she added.

A 96-year-old resident of an asylum was the first to receive the vaccine in Spain. Araceli Rosario Hidalgo, who was born in 1924, received her dose on Sunday at a nursing home in Guadalajara, near Madrid.

The second person in the country to receive a vaccine was a staff member from the same house, nurse Mónica Tapias.

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The Czech Republic took a different approach – the first dose of vaccine was given to the country’s Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, while the second dose was given to war veteran Emilia Řepíková.

Babiš has been on fire in recent months after coronavirus cases broke out in the country.
The prime minister was initially reluctant to impose stricter rules on the population, citing the need to protect the country’s economy, but the decision led to the widespread spread of the virus. Eventually, the restrictions were enforced and Babiš apologized.

As the EU officially launched its vaccination program on Sunday, some countries began vaccinating people a day earlier – the doses were given on Saturday in both Germany and Slovakia.

The launch of the vaccine comes as European governments struggle to limit the spread of a new variant of Covid-19 that was first detected in the UK.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is continuing its ongoing review of other promising vaccine candidates, including those from AstraZeneca and Oxford University, as well as Johnson & Johnson.

Barbie Nadeau, Nicola Ruotolo, Atika Shubert, Ya Chun Wang and Niamh Kennedy contributed to this report.

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