Cremona (Italy) (AFP)

Less than a year ago, the patients were sorted there in tents erected in an emergency: at the heart of the Italian tragedy at the time of the appearance of the new coronavirus last winter, the Cremona hospital injected Sunday his first vaccines.

A first batch of 9,750 doses arrived in Italy on Friday was distributed throughout the territory and delivered on Sunday to hospitals, in Rome and in the region where they began to vaccinate, as throughout the European Union.

In Cremona, in Lombardy (north), the most affected region of the country with nearly 25,000 deaths out of a total of 72,000, the vaccine arouses immense hope among caregivers, who lived through hell during the emergence of the pandemic at the end of February.

"Today is a great moment when we think back to all that we have gone through in recent months, especially during the first wave of the pandemic," says nurse Isabella Palazzini, who was among the first to be vaccinated.

"It was very difficult times to live, both for the sick and for us caregivers."

Three of his colleagues died from Covid-19.

When the precious cargo was handed over, doctors in white coats and uniformed police officers, but also the mayor and the prefect, all masked by law, began to applaud together.

This time under the supervision of armed riflemen, the vaccines locked in a gray cooler were then transported on a small cart to the pharmacological department to be stored in double-locked refrigerators.

"It's a moment of great joy," said Monia Betti, the director of the establishment's pulmonology service, who also received an injection.

"It is the hope of a change which finally materializes, after 10 months during which we have taken care of very seriously ill patients".

- Stay vigilant -

Before the pandemic, Cremona was best known for being the homeland of Stradivarius, a peaceful town with 70,000 inhabitants including 160 luthiers, weakened by foreign competition and then by the halt brought by the virus to the economy and cultural life .

The health crisis began on February 21 in northern Italy, then the new epicenter of the pandemic after China.

From the morning of the 22nd, the Cremona hospital set up a tent to accommodate symptomatic cases.

Italy then recorded only 79 deaths and 2,500 cases ... A month later, Lombardy alone already deplored more than 2,500 deaths.

The arrival of vaccines comes after Italy has reconfigured, just before Christmas, to avoid an explosion of contaminations during the holidays and push back the specter of a third wave, feared by caregivers.

The country hopes to launch mass vaccination in early January, with 470,000 injections scheduled each week.

In the meantime, underlines Angelo Pan, the head of the infectious diseases department at the Cremona hospital, the Italians must remain vigilant.

"It will take time before the percentage of the vaccinated population reaches a level which seriously limits the spread of the virus," he argues.

The government estimates that this percentage should be between 75 and 80%, while less than 60% of Italians say they intend to be bitten.

Enrico Sorti did not hesitate.

Head of the intensive care unit at the Cremona hospital, he was one of the very first to have received an injection of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Nothing, he said, "supports the thesis of a poorly tested vaccine" and a "less efficient and less careful" design process.

To set an example, the president of the Lombardy region, Attilio Fontana, 68, was also vaccinated on Sunday.

© 2020 AFP