One by one, the European Union member states have welcomed the first new crown vaccine, called the Pfizer vaccine, jointly developed by Pfizer and German biotechnology. Ten months ago, the two companies called their vaccine development program “Operation Lightspeed,” and ten months later, on Nov. 18, they announced that their vaccine was both safe and 95 percent effective.
The European Union decided to start vaccination in all member states on Sunday, and in fact Germany, Hungary and Slovakia were already one step ahead, starting vaccination on Saturday. Germany’s health minister hailed Saturday as “a day of hope,” saying the vaccine will change our lives so that next fall, winter and Christmas we won’t be living under the shadow of a new pandemic.
Before the European Union, several countries had already started vaccinating, such as China. If the Chinese authorities have not so far approved the marketing of the vaccine it produces, early from the summer the authorities have launched a mass vaccination and according to information, more than one million Chinese people have now been vaccinated. Russia was next, starting on December 5.
The United Kingdom, on the other hand, was the first Western country to approve the launch of the Pfizer vaccine, which began on Dec. 8, and by that point, more than 600,000 people had received their first dose of the vaccine. In the West, the United Kingdom was followed by Canada and the United States, both of which officially launched on December 14, followed by Switzerland on December 23, and then Serbia, all of which use Pfizer vaccines. More than one million Americans have already received their first dose. In addition, the U.S. and Canada are the first countries in the world to approve the launch of the Modena vaccine.
In the Middle East, the UAE was the first country to approve the Chinese GMP vaccine, approving the GMP vaccine for launch on December 14 and the Pfizer vaccine on December 23. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain began on December 17, Israel on December 19, Qatar on December 23, Kuwait on December 24, and Amman will begin this Sunday. All of these countries chose the U.S. Pfizer in the first instance, however, Bahrain also approved the Chinese national drug at the same time as Pfizer.
In Latin America, Mexico, Chile, and Costa Vega also began Pfizer vaccines on December 24. Jordan, Singapore, and Argentina also approved the Pfizer vaccine for marketing, but when injections will begin has not been determined. Argentina also allowed the Russian satellite V vaccine to be marketed.
France followed the lead of EU member states, with the first shipment of Pfizer vaccine arriving on French soil starting Saturday. The first vaccinations have been administered since Sunday in two nursing homes in the French suburbs of Paris and the eastern French city of Dijon. At a time when more than 62,000 people have died from the new coronavirus in France, it would not be an exaggeration to say that France is awaiting the arrival of the Pfizer vaccine, and that the British variant of the virus was also found in France on Friday.
The first frozen batch of 19,500 doses of the vaccine arrived in France on Saturday morning under gendarmerie escort at the Paris Public Hospitals Group, with Lyon, Lille and Tours also receiving the first batch on the same day. The first 3,900 doses of vaccine received by the Paris Public Hospitals Group will be sent to Sevran, where injections will begin on Sunday morning. Another batch of vaccines will be sent to Dijon in the provinces on Saturday afternoon, with injections also scheduled for Sunday morning.
The Pfizer vaccine is logistically demanding and must be transported in a refrigerator at -60 to 80 degrees Celsius, after which it can be stored at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius for up to five days. At the Paris Public Hospital, masked staff equipped with gloves to prevent super-freezing put boxes and boxes of vaccines into isothermal boxes before delivering them to other hospitals.
The head of the pharmaceutical department of the Paris Public Hospitals Group, Yuette, said that every weekend, plans for transporting vaccines are reworked to do the most to avoid losses. A nurse who was on the scene was excited to say that it was a historic day.
Starting next week, elderly people in 23 nursing homes in Paris, Lyon, Lille and Tours will be vaccinated, and in two weeks, the scale of the vaccination will expand to more than a hundred locations, and from mid-January, in the words of French Health Minister Veyran, mass vaccination will begin. In the first phase, which starts now, a million people will be advised to be vaccinated first.
A case of the British variant of the virus was found in France on Friday. Is the Pfizer vaccine effective enough to deal with it? The head of the French health authority said the Pfizer vaccine “should be very effective against the variant virus. Currently, the British variant has been found in Germany, Lebanon, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, Spain, and Japan. So far, there is no evidence that this variant virus causes serious illness.
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