Europe launches Covid-19 vaccination as new virus strains spread

A 78-year-old former French cleaner, a 96-year-old Spaniard in a care home and a 29-year-old Italian nurse have become among the first people in the EU to receive the BioNTech / Pfizer coronavirus vaccine. as a new, more contagious strain of the virus spreads across the block.

In coordinated actions on Sunday, countries including France, Germany, Italy and Spain began vaccinating elderly, endangered people and medical and nursing staff, warning that the restrictions were likely to be tightened rather than relaxed in the immediate future.

France on Sunday morning launched its vaccination program with elderly patients and medical staff in Sevran near Paris – the first to receive the injection was Mauricette, a 78-year-old retired cleaning lady – followed by a geriatric ward in Dijon, Burgundy in the noon.

Others who were vaccinated on Sunday included Araceli Rosario Hidalgo, a 96-year-old in a nursing home in Guadalajara, who received his first injection in Spain, and Claudia Alivernini, a nurse in Rome, the first person. in Italy who received. the jab.

In Germany, Edith Kwoizalla, a 101-year-old woman, was vaccinated in the state of Saxony-Anhalt on Saturday – prompting the national health ministry to complain that the local authorities’ decision to start the jabs a day early, the coordinated EU implementation.

The vaccination campaign began after the EU’s drug regulator approved the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine, the first Covid-19 shot to go green. The British and American regulators also approved the vaccine and began rolling it out this month.

The EU has ordered 300 million doses of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine – enough for 150 million people, as two doses are needed for each person, as well as hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines yet to be approved, including those approved by AstraZeneca, Sanofi was made. GSK, Johnson & Johnson, CureVac and Moderna.

“If you had told me six months ago that it would happen so quickly, I would not have believed it,” Olivier Véran, French health minister, was quoted as saying in Le Journal du Dimanche. But he also warned that the French government could not rule out a third national exclusion to delay infections, and called on people not to celebrate New Year’s Eve. German authorities have issued similar warnings, urging citizens to refrain from the tradition of setting off fireworks to avoid large rallies in the street and to stop hospitals with injuries.

France, like Germany and Italy, has already detected a case of the new, highly contagious variant of the coronavirus that has become widespread in parts of the south of England and has led to travel with the UK being restricted or banned. Spain said on Saturday that it had identified four cases, all people arriving from Britain.

The new variant has also been detected in other countries, including Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided on a third nationwide exclusion starting Sunday night. Israeli residents will be restricted within a mile of their homes, but schools until fourth grade and after tenth grade will remain open.

There is no definitive evidence that the new vaccines offer protection against the new variant. But experts argue that this is very likely to happen, as the part of the virus that targets the stinging levels, the so-called ear protein, has probably not changed.

However, scientists have also warned that vaccination campaigns and closures are likely to cause ‘evolutionary pressure’ on the virus in the long run, meaning that adjustments to highly effective vaccines will still be needed. Health authorities have already estimated that vaccination campaigns are likely to be needed annually to provide lasting protection against future outbreaks.

There are also questions about how many citizens will eventually accept vaccination. France is one of the most skeptical countries in the world about vaccines. In a 2018 study, one in three did not agree that vaccines are safe, the highest percentage in any country. In Germany, according to a YouGov poll, about two-thirds of people are willing to take the vaccine, while about 19 percent are against a vaccination, and another 16 percent do not decide. Of those who said they were willing to be vaccinated, 33 percent said they would take the vaccine after waiting to see the impact on those who were vaccinated first.

But Health Minister Jens Spahn trumpeted the vaccine as a national achievement. “The vaccine was developed by BioNTech, a German company,” he said. “This vaccine, made in Germany, means hope for us and for the world.”

Additional reporting by Donato Paolo Mancini, Davide Ghiglione in Rome and Mehul Srivastava in Tel Aviv