THE REST OF EU ARE WELL AHEAD OF US
Many EU countries are well ahead of us in the race to get their populations vaccinated against Covid-19. Here’s a selection of how they are implementing g their j jab strategies...
HUNGARY & S SLOVAKIA
Hungary and Slovakia stole a march on their fellow EU n nations as they began vaccinating people against Covid-19 on Saturday, a day ahead of roll- outs in several other coun countries including France and Spain, as the pandemics urges across the continent.
Hungary administered the vaccine, jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, to frontline workers at hospitals in Budapest, the capital, after receiving its first shipment 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 has reported 315,362 Covid- 19 cases with 8,951 deaths. More than 6,000 people are still in hospital with Covid19, straining the central European country’s care system.
GERMANY
In Germany, a small number of people at a care home for the elderly were inoculated on Saturday, a day before the country’s official start of its vaccination campaign.
Some German districts will not use the Covid-19 vaccine received over the weekend as it is feared the cold chain could have been interrupted during its delivery, a district administrators told Reuters TV.
‘ There were doubts as to whether the cold chain was maintained at all times,’ the Lichtenfels district administrator Christian Meissner told Reuters TV.
‘BioNTech commented and said that the vaccine was probably OK, but probably OK is not enough,’ he said, adding that the shots would not be used to prevent damage to the public’s trust in the vaccination campaign.
A Lichtenfels district spokesman said yesterday that 1,000 shots earmarked for use in Lichtenfels as well as Coburg, Kronach, Kulmbach, Hof, Bayreuth and Wunsie de lin northern Bavaria had been affected by the temperature issue.
SPAIN
Spain started vaccinating people on S Sunday. However, Pfizer has postponed the delivery of a new batch of the coronavirus vaccine by one day to today due to a logistics hurdle, Spanish health minister Salvador Illa said yesterday.
The company suffered an incident related to the control of temperature in the process of loading and sending out the vaccines, the minister said, adding the incident is now solved.
CZECH REPUBLIC
In Prague, Czech prime minister A Andrej Babis receive did hi his shot at dawn on Sunday and asserted: ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’ Sitting next to him was World War II veteran Emilie Repikova, who also received a shot.
FRANCE
France’ s first vaccination at a nursing home in an area outside of Paris on S Sunday was not broadcast on live television as it was elsewhere in Europe and no government ministers attended. ‘We didn’t need to convince her. She said, “yes, I’m ready for anything to avoid getting this disease”,’ said Dr Samir Tine, head of geriatric services for the Sevran nursing home where France’s first shot went to 78year-old Mauricette. ‘It’s an important day,’ Dr Tine said. ‘We are very eager to have a new weapon at our disposal and we are very eager to rediscover our normal lives.’
BULGARIA
Among the politicians who got shots o on Sunday to promote a wider acceptance of vaccinations was Bulgarian health minister Kostadin Angelov.
‘I can’t wait to see my 70year- old father without fear that I could infect him,’ Mr Angelov said.
BRITAIN
On December 8, Co. Fermanagh native Margaret Keenan, 90, became the first p person in the world to t receive i t the Pfizer Covid-19 jab after its clinical approval, as the NHS launched its biggest vaccine campaign.
Keenan received the jab from the nurse May Parsons at her local hospital in Coventry.
Britain reported 41,385 new Covid-19 cases yesterday, a new daily record, as a rapidly spreading variant of the coronavirus increases infection rates and the holiday weekend affected the reporting of new cases.
There were 357 new deaths within 28 days of a positive test, the government’s coronavirus statistics portal said.
GREECE
After he got his shot, Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared on S Sunday ‘a great day for science and the European Union’. ‘We hope that, with time, even those of our fellow citizens who are suspicious of vaccination will be convinced it is the right thing to do,’ he added.
ITALY
In I taly, the f i rst European country to be hit by the pandemic and the one w with t he hi ghest death toll, a nurse i n Rome received the first jab on Sunday. The nurse works at the Spallanzani hospital, where a Wuhan couple were the country’s first two confirmed cases back in January.