BUDAPEST / PARIS / MADRID (Reuters) – Hungary and Slovakia stole a march against their EU nations as they began vaccinating people against COVID-19 on Saturday, a day before it was launched in other countries, including France and Spain. while the pandemic grows the continent.
In Germany, a small number of people in a nursing home were inoculated on Saturday, a day before the country’s official start of its vaccination campaign.
Mass vaccination across the European Union, which is home to almost 450 million people, would be a crucial step towards ending a pandemic that has killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide, affected economies and destroyed businesses and jobs.
Hungary administered the vaccine, jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, to front-line employees at hospitals in Budapest, the capital, after receiving its first transport of enough doses to inoculate 4,875 people. The first worker to receive the shot was Adrienne Kertesz, a doctor at Del-Pest Central Hospital.
Hungary reported 315,362 COVID-19 cases with 8,951 deaths. More than 6,000 people are still in hospital with COVID-19, straining the country’s care system in Central Europe.
“We are very happy that the vaccine is here,” said Zsuzsa and Antal Takacs, a 68- and 75-year-old couple playing table tennis in a park in Budapest.
“We will receive the vaccination because our daughter had a child in France last month and we want to go and see them. We do not dare to travel before receiving the vaccine “, said Zsuzsa.
In Slovakia, Vladimir Krcmery, an infectious disease specialist and a member of the government’s pandemic commission, was the first person to receive the vaccine, followed by colleagues.
Countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Spain, will begin mass vaccinations on Sunday, starting with health workers.
The distribution of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which was first launched in the UK earlier this month, presents tough challenges. The vaccine uses a new genetic technology of mRNA, which means that it must be stored at ultra-low temperatures of about -80 degrees Celsius (-112 ° F).
NEW VARIANCE IN FRANCE, SPAIN
France, which received the first delivery of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine with two doses on Saturday, will begin its administration on Sunday in the greater Paris area and in the Burgundy-Franche-Comte region.
“We have a total of 19,500 doses, which amounts to 3,900 vials. These doses will be stored in our freezer at minus 80 degrees (Celsius) and will then be distributed in various nursing homes and hospitals, “said Franck Huet, head of pharmaceuticals for the public hospital system in Paris.
The French government hopes to vaccinate about 1 million people in nursing homes in January and February, and then another 14 million to 15 million in the wider population between March and June.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was approved by the French medical authority on Thursday.
France reported only 3,093 new coronavirus infections on Saturday in the last 24 hours, a sharp drop from more than 20,000 cases in each of the previous two days, unseen figures since November 20. But the seven-day moving average of new daily cases, which standardize reporting irregularities, is about a month.
France has a total of 2,550,864 confirmed COVID-19 cases, the fifth largest number in the world, while its number of COVID-19 deaths is 62,573, the seventh highest.
In a worrying development, the Ministry of Health said on Friday that a man who had recently arrived from London gave positive results for a new variant of the virus that has spread rapidly in the south of England and is believed to be more infectious. Sweden also confirmed on Saturday that it had detected the first case of the new variant in a passenger from the United Kingdom.
In Spain, health authorities in Madrid said on Saturday that they had confirmed four cases of the new variant of the virus since the country received the first deliveries of vaccine.
“Vaccination will begin tomorrow in Spain, coordinated with the rest of Europe,” Health Minister Salvador Illa wrote on Twitter. “This is the beginning of the end of the pandemic.”
The doses will be transported by air to the Spanish islands and the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla and by road to other regions of the country, where a total of about 50,000 people have died from the disease.
“THE WINDOW OF HOPE OPENED”
Meanwhile, Germany said the trucks were heading for the delivery of the vaccine to nursing homes, which are the first to receive the vaccine with the official start of the vaccination campaign on Sunday.
However, a small number of people in Germany received the vaccine on Saturday, with the first 101-year-old woman in a nursing home in Halberstadt, on the Harz Hill area.
The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country increased by 14,455 to 1,627,103, data from the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases showed on Saturday. More than 29,000 people died in total.
The federal government plans to distribute more than 1.3 million doses of vaccine to local health authorities by the end of this year and about 700,000 a week since January.
“There may be a few hiccups at one time or another at first, but this is normal when such a complex logistical process begins,” said Health Minister Jensen Spahn.
In Portugal, a truck escorted by police dropped the first batch of COVID-19 shots into a warehouse in the central region of the country. From there, the nearly 10,000 photos will be delivered to five major hospitals.
“It is a historic milestone for all of us, an important day after such a difficult year,” Health Minister Marta Temido told reporters outside the warehouse.
“A window of hope has now opened, not to mention that it is still a very difficult struggle.”
Reporting by Anita Komuves in Budapest, Benoit Van Overstraeten in Paris and Isla Binnie in Madrid; Additional reports by Yiming Woo and Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris, Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt, Catarina Demony in Lisbon and Radovan Stoklasa in Nitra; Written by Pravin Char; Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Leslie Adler