On Sunday, December 27, the EU has officially launched its program of mass vaccination against COVID-19, with the goal of making shots available to all adult population by the end of 2021, as was stated in the report on the official website of the European Commission.
"The ... vaccine has been delivered to all EU countries," European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Twitter on Saturday. However, in different European countries, vaccinations against COVID-19 will begin on December 27, 28, and 29. The Commission has declared December 27, 28 and 29 "EU vaccination days," which von der Leyen said were "a touching moment of unity." She added, "Vaccination is the lasting way out of the pandemic."
“European Commission presented a European vaccines strategy to accelerate the development, manufacturing and deployment of vaccines against COVID-19. A safe and effective vaccine is our best bet to overcome the pandemic,” the announcement said.
The first people to receive doses of the vaccine were largely elderly or frontline medical workers.
Notably, the use of Pfizer and BionTech in the EU was approved on December 21. The European Union seeks to receive up to 300 million doses of the drug from these developers. But simultaneously, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is continuing its rolling review of other promising vaccine candidates, including those from AstraZeneca and Oxford University, and from Johnson & Johnson. The agreements have been reached between the EU and six vaccine companies. It is planned to receive up to 2 billion doses in total.
The vaccine rollout comes as European governments race to contain the spread of a new Covid-19 variant that was first detected in the UK. Germany and Slovakia had made a start on vaccinating people a day earlier.
As was reported by "Apostrophe", on December 26, in Germany, the first vaccinations were held in a nursing home in Halberstadt, Saxony-Anhalt.