EU ready for vaccination as mutated strain spreads
Hungary became the first EU nation to start vaccinating its people against Covid-19 on Saturday
BUDAPEST/PARIS: Hungary stole a march on its fellow EU nations as it started vaccinating its people against Covid-19 on Saturday, a day ahead of rollouts in countries including France and Germany as the pandemic surges across the continent.
Mass vaccination across the European Union, home to almost 450 million people, would be a crucial step towards ending a pandemic that has killed more than 1.7 million around the world, crippled economies and destroyed businesses and jobs.
Hungary administered the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech to frontline workers at hospitals in the capital Budapest after receiving its first shipment of enough doses to inoculate 4,875 people, state news agency MTI said. The first worker to receive the shot was Adrienne Kertesz, a doctor at Del-Pest Central Hospital.
Hungary has reported 315,362 Covid-19 cases with 8,951 deaths. More than 6,000 people are still in hospital with Covid-19, straining the healthcare system.
“We are very happy that the vaccine is here,” Zsuzsa Takacs and Antal Takacs, a couple aged 68 and 75, said while playing table tennis in a Budapest park. “We will get the vaccination because our daughter had a baby in France last month and we want to go see them. We do not dare travel before we get the vaccine,” Zsuzsa said.
The Hungarian rollout came a day before countries including France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Spain are planning to begin mass-vaccinations.
The distribution of the PfizerBioNTech shot presents tough challenges because it uses new mRNA genetic technology, which means it must be stored at ultra-low temperatures of minus 80 degrees Celsius.
France, which received its first shipment of the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Saturday, will start rolling it out on Sunday in the greater Paris area and in the Burgundy-FrancheComte region.
“We have 19,500 doses in total, which amounts to 3,900 vials. These doses will be stored in our freezer at minus 80 degrees (Celsius) and will be then distributed to different nursing homes and hospitals,” said Franck Huet, head of pharmaceutical products for the Paris public hospital system.
Hours before the first coronavirus vaccine doses arrived in France, Paris’ health ministry confirmed late on Friday that it had detected its first case of the new variant in a citizen returned from Britain. Several countries have reported cases of the new strain, which has sent jitters through already overstretched health services.