EU administers first vaccines during coordinated rollout

Nurses carry the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine through the Santa Maria Hospital in Lisbon

Credit: PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP via Getty Images

European Union countries have started a coordinated campaign to vaccinate their citizens on Sunday in a show of unity which comes days after a trade deal was reached ahead of Britain’s departure from the bloc.

Elderly people, doctors and nurses were the first to receive a jab at the start of a campaign expected to last months as Covid-19 cases rise and Europe struggles to contain new, more infectious strains of the virus identified in Britain and South Africa.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved the two-dose vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech last Monday.

Three health workers at Rome’s Spallanzani hospital were inoculated early on Sunday. “This is the most efficient way to fight this pandemic,” said professor Maria Rosaria Capobianchi, the first person to receive the dose in Italy.

“Today is a symbolic day that must give the idea of the beauty of Europe, which has bought the vaccines for everybody and distributed them,” Italy’s Special Commissioner Domenico Arcuri said.

Araceli Hidalgo, a 96-year-old living in a care home in central Spain, became the first person in the country to be vaccinated as national television broadcast the event.

And in France, 78-year-old Mauricette rolled up her left sleeve to receive the jab in front of cameras in Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the country’s hardest-hit areas in the Paris suburbs.

The campaign also started in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary among others. The EU has secured up to 300 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and has deals for over 1.5 million doses of other vaccines yet to be authorised for use.

Over 16 million cases and 400,000 deaths have been reported in Europe, where new Covid-19 infections have risen again as countries struggled to contain a new, more infectious strain of the virus which was first identified in Britain and caused border closures and a halt to air traffic between Britain and its EU neighbours.