Warsaw (Poland): European Union nations on Sunday officially kicked off a coordinated effort to give COVID-19 vaccinations to adults among their 450 million citizens, marking a moment of hope in the continent's battle against the worst public health crisis in a century.
The rollout came even as the first cases of a new virus variant that has been spreading rapidly around London and southern England were detected in France and Spain. The new variant, which British authorities said is much more easily transmitted, has caused European countries, the United States and China to put new restrictions on travel for people from Britain.
Shots were administered on Sunday morning to the most vulnerable people. Health care workers who take care of them, and some politicians to reassure the public that the vaccinations are safe.
The vaccines, developed by Germany's BioNTech and American drugmaker Pfizer, started arriving in EU countries on Friday. The EU has seen some of the world's earliest and hardest-hit virus hot spots, including Italy and Spain.
Others EU countries, like the Czech Republic, were spared the worst early on only to see their health care systems near collapse in the fall.
Altogether, the EU's 27 nations have recorded at least 16 million coronavirus infections and more than 336,000 deaths — huge numbers that experts still agree understate the true toll of the pandemic due to missed cases and limited testing.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen released a video on Saturday celebrating the vaccine rollout, calling it “a touching moment of unity.”
As it turned out, some EU immunizations began a day early in Germany, Hungary and Slovakia. The operator of a German nursing home where dozens of people were vaccinated on Saturday, including a 101-year-old woman, said “every day that we wait is one day too many.”
The campaign should ease frustrations that were building up, especially in Germany, as Britain, Canada and the United States kicked off their inoculation programs with the same vaccine weeks earlier.
Each country is deciding on its own who will get the first shots. Spain, France and Germany, among others, are vowing to put the elderly and residents in nursing homes first.
In Italy, which has Europe's worst virus toll at over 71,000 dead, a nurse in Rome's Spallanzani Hospital, the main infectious diseases facility in the capital, will be the first in the country to receive the vaccine, followed by other health personnel.
EU leaders are counting on the vaccine rollout to help the bloc project a sense of unity in a complex lifesaving mission after it faced a year of difficulties in negotiating a post-Brexit trade deal with Britain.
