Healthcare workers and the elderly were among the first in Europe on Sunday to receive the newly approved Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine after the drug was granted an emergency authorization for use throughout the 27-state economic bloc.
“Today is a beautiful, symbolic day: All the citizens of Europe together are starting to get their vaccinations, the first ray of light after a long night,” Italian virus chief Domenico Arcuri said. “We all have to continue to be prudent, cautious, and responsible. We still have a long road ahead, but finally, we see a bit of light.”
While Germany, Hungary, and Slovakia, began select vaccinations on Saturday, Sunday’s European Union-wide vaccination effort “was aimed at projecting a unified message that the vaccine was safe and Europe’s best chance to emerge from the pandemic,” according to the Associated Press.
Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine candidate was granted an emergency authorization last Monday, and distribution began Christmas Day as vials of the drug shipped from a factory in Belgium to hospitals across the EU.
The EU secured 200 million vaccines from Pfizer and has the option to obtain another 100 million, according to Bloomberg, setting the bloc on track to vaccinate its roughly 450 million citizens. Between the vaccines it will receive from Pfizer and the anticipated approval of Moderna’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccines, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc is projected to have a surplus of vaccines, which it could share with nonmember Balkan states such as Serbia or Bosnia and Herzegovina and with African states.
“Europe is well-positioned,” she said. “Once enough people have been vaccinated, we can start traveling, meeting our friends and family again, and have normal holidays, which we all long for.”
Despite securing a sufficient number of doses, it will still take months to inoculate enough of the continent to begin approaching herd immunity.
Like much of the world, the EU is in the thick of a worsening coronavirus surge, with more than 16 million cases reported across the 27 member states and the United Kingdom, according to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
States such Sweden, once hailed as an anomalous success for mitigating the spread of the virus without implementing harsh shutdowns like those experienced in the United States and across the rest of Europe, now has one of the highest 14-day case rates per 100,000 inhabitants, more than double the rates of Germany and Italy and triple that of France.
