The countries of the European Union, including the nations most affected by the pandemic such as Italy, Spain and France, started their vaccination campaigns against Covid-19 this weekend, welcoming a first victory in the fight against the coronavirus, a variant of which is however increasingly worrying.
Delivered on Saturday, the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine were injected in Italy shortly before 8 a.m. (7 a.m. GMT) to nurse Claudia Alivernini and professor Maria Rosaria Capobianchi, director of the virology laboratory at Spallanzani hospital from Rome.
"I say it with all my heart: let's get vaccinated. For us. For our loved ones and for the community," said Claudia Alivernini.
The most battered country in the EU with nearly 72,000 dead, reconfigured since mid-December, "Italy is waking up", reacted Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Twitter, welcoming a date which "will remain forever engraved in our memories ".
An hour later, it was Araceli Rosario Hidalgo Sanchez, 96, who was the first to be vaccinated in Spain in a retirement home in Guadalajara (center).
She said, with a smile, that she "felt nothing" when the vaccine was given to her.
Germany, Hungary and Slovakia led the way on Saturday in the EU, a day ahead of the official launch of the campaign in this bloc.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the start of the campaign a "touching moment of unity", adding that it would "help gradually return to our normal lives".
"Reason and science"
At the end of the morning, Mauricette, a 78-year-old former household helper, received the first French vaccine at René-Muret hospital in Sevran, near Paris.
“I am very moved,” she said.
French President Emmanuel Macron, recalling on Twitter that the vaccine was free and not compulsory in his country, hoped that "reason and science (would) guide us", while the majority of French people (56%) do not consider not to be vaccinated against Covid-19, according to a survey.
The vaccine was particularly expected in France, where the epidemic has caused the death of more than 62,500 people and where the virus is actively circulating, to the point that the authorities do not rule out an upcoming 3rd confinement.
In Greece, "science has brought us the most beautiful gift for Christmas", declared President Katerina Sakellaropoulou after being vaccinated, followed by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Elsewhere in Europe, an 84-year-old archbishop in Slovenia, a head of the infectious diseases department in Portugal or the first nurse to have treated a patient with Covid-19 in Romania in February were the first to have been vaccinated in their respective countries.
The Nordic states (Sweden, Finland and Denmark) also started their campaigns on Sunday.
While most EU countries had chosen elderly people or caregivers, in the Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babis himself was vaccinated first.
"Yesterday I saw a woman on television say that she would wait to see Babis vaccinated. So I decided to lead by example," said the populist billionaire.
New cases of the variant
Outside the EU, Norway also started its vaccination campaign on Sunday, as did the Sultanate of Oman, the last member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait) to do so.
Before them, many other countries around the world had already started vaccinating against the Covid-19, which has killed at least 1,758,026 and infected more than 80 million people, according to official data compiled by AFP on Sunday. .
China was the first to do so, as early as last summer.
In December, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile, among others, followed suit.
In the United States, the country most affected in terms of both deaths (at least 331,916) and cases (19 million), famous immunologist Anthony Fauci said on Sunday that he feared that the worst of the pandemic was to come after the holidays the end of the year.
He fears an "increase in addition to the spectacular increase" already experienced by the world's leading power, with regularly more than 200,000 confirmed cases and more than 3,000 deaths per day for nearly three weeks.
Israel, which is due to start next week, has the ambition to vaccinate a quarter of its nine million inhabitants in one month.
In the meantime, this country begins a third general confinement on Sunday, for at least two weeks.
Another clearing up after a year marked by this pandemic, the British pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca said on Sunday that it had achieved "100% protection" against severe forms of Covid-19 with its vaccine developed with the University of Oxford, highly anticipated because it is inexpensive and does not require a temperature as low as that of Pfizer / BioNTech.
Although these first injections give a glimmer of hope, concerns have arisen in recent days after the reporting, in more and more countries, of the new strain of the coronavirus.
Jordan, Portugal, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Spain and Japan are among the latest to have detected this possibly more contagious British variant.
After its discovery, the concern had pushed dozens of states to cut their air, sea or land links with the United Kingdom.
Faced with worrying levels of contamination, several countries are again subject to restrictive measures, such as Austria, which confined its population on Saturday, until January 24.
Italy and Ireland, for their part, re-confined themselves before Christmas, and local lockdowns or severe restrictions affect millions of people in the United Kingdom.
With AFP
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