EU Kicks off Covid-19 Vaccination Campaign

Covid-19 vaccinations campaigns, in all 27 European Union countries, began, Sunday, as first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived in EU countries, including hard-hit Italy, Spain and France.

Most countries have received just under 10,000 doses in their first shipments, according to AP.

Some of these countries include Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Austria, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Bulgaria.

Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine shipments have arrived to EU countries, home to nearly 450 million people.

Ireland will start the vaccination campaign on December 30, whereas Belgium is scheduled to start on Monday.

Germany, Hungary and Slovakia gave their first shots, Saturday, a day ahead of the roll out of the vaccine in several other European Union countries, according to AP reports.

A 101-year-old woman in a care home became the first person in Germany to be inoculated, and the first jabs were also handed out in Hungary and Slovakia.

Germany gave the first shots to a small number of people at a home for the elderly on Saturday, while Hungary administered its first vaccine doses to frontline health workers in Budapest.

Also, Slovakia also gave some its first shots to healthcare workers, according to AP

“We'll get our freedom back, we'll be able to embrace again,” Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said as he urged his countrymen to get the shot.

The approval and roll-out of vaccines has boosted hopes that 2021 could bring a respite from the pandemic, which has killed more than 1.7 million people since emerging in China late last year.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated, in a video message ahead of the first International Day of Epidemic Preparedness, it was time to learn the lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic.

“History tells us that this will not be the last pandemic, and epidemics are a fact of life,” Ghebreyesus said.

“Any efforts to improve human health are doomed unless they address the critical interface between humans and animals, and the existential threat of climate change that's making our Earth less habitable,” he added.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn said in a news conference that the “vaccine is the decisive key to end this pandemic ... it is the key to getting our lives back.”

On his part, Slovakia's health minister Marek Krajčí called the country's first coronavirus vaccination “historic moment.”

Portuguese Health Minister Marta Temido called the delivery of the vaccine “a historic milestone for all of us, an important day after such a difficult year.”