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* Goal is to offer vaccine to all adults through 2021
* 'Thank God,' says first recipient in Spain, 96
* Delays in some German cities over cooling concerns
* Urgency as new virus variants crop up
By Isla Binnie and Giselda Vagnoni
MADRID/ROME, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Europe launched a mass
COVID-19 vaccination drive on Sunday with pensioners and medics
lining up to get the first shots to see off a pandemic that has
crippled economies and claimed more than 1.7 million lives
worldwide.
"Thank God," 96-year-old Araceli Hidalgo said as she became
the first person in Spain to have a vaccine at her care home in
Guadalajara, near the capital Madrid.
"Let's see if we can make this virus go away."
In Italy, the first country in Europe to record significant
numbers of infections, 29-year-old nurse Claudia Alivernini was
one of three medical staff at the head of the queue for the shot
developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
"It is the beginning of the end ... it was an exciting,
historic moment," she said at Rome's Spallanzani hospital.
The region of 450 million people is trying to catch up with
the United States and Britain, which have already started
vaccinations using the Pfizer shot.
The European Union is due to receive 12.5 million doses by
the end of the year, enough to vaccinate 6.25 million people
based on the two-dose regimen. The companies are scrambling to
meet global demand and aim to make 1.3 billion shots next year.
The bloc has secured contracts with a range of drugmakers
besides Pfizer, including Moderna and AstraZeneca
, for a total of more than two billion vaccine doses and
has set a goal for all adults to be inoculated during 2021.
With surveys pointing to high levels of hesitancy towards
the vaccine in countries from France to Poland, leaders of the
27-country European Union are promoting it as the best chance of
getting back to something like normal life next year.
"We have a new weapon against the virus: the vaccine. We
must stand firm, once more," tweeted French President Emmanuel
Macron, who tested positive for the coronavirus this month and
left quarantine on Christmas Eve.
But Ireneusz Sikorski, 41, leaving church in the Polish
capital of Warsaw, was sceptical.
"I don't think there's a vaccine in history that has been
tested so quickly," he said. "I am not saying vaccination
shouldn't be taking place. But I am not going to test an
unverified vaccine on my children, or on myself."
COOLING CONCERNS
Distribution of the shot presents tough challenges as the
vaccine uses new mRNA technology and must be stored at about -70
degrees Celsius (-112°F).
In Germany, the campaign faced delays in several cities
after a temperature tracker showed that about 1,000 shots may
not have been kept cold enough during transit.
BioNtech said it was responsible for the shipment to the 25
German distribution centres and that the federal states and
local authorities were responsible for the shipment to the
vaccination centres and the mobile vaccination teams.
"This is where the variations in temperature occurred. We
are in contact with many authorities to provide advice, however
it is up to them how to proceed", a spokeswoman said.
The Pfizer shots being used in Europe were shipped from its
factory in Puurs, Belgium, in specially designed containers
filled with dry ice. They can be stored for up to six months at
Antarctic winter temperatures, or for five days at 2C to 8C, a
type of refrigeration commonly available at hospitals.
In Italy, temporary solar-powered healthcare pavilions
designed to look like five-petalled primrose flowers - a symbol
of spring - sprouted in town squares as the vaccination drive
kicked off.
Portugal has been establishing separate cold storage units
for its Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores.
At the Santa Maria hospital in Portugal's capital Lisbon,
Pedro Pires waited for a shot with other nurses at the end of an
overnight shift.
"It has been tiring," he told Reuters.
Branka Anicic, an 81-year-old resident of a care home in
Zagreb, became the first person to get a shot in Croatia. "I'm
happy I will now be able to see my great-grandchildren," she
said.
German pilot Samy Kramer celebrated the vaccination campaign
by tracing out a giant syringe in the sky. He flew 200 km (125
miles), following a syringe-shaped route that showed up on
internet site flightradar24.
'FIRST MAN ON THE MOON'
The vaccination drive is all the more urgent because of the
concern around new variants of the virus linked to a rapid
expansion of cases in Britain and South Africa.
"We know that the pandemic won't just disappear as of today,
but the vaccine is the beginning of the victory over the
pandemic, the vaccine is a 'game changer'," said Austrian
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
Cases of the UK variant have been detected in Australia,
Hong Kong and in Europe, mostly recently in Sweden, France,
Norway and Portugal's island of Madeira. So far, scientists say
there is no evidence to suggest the vaccines developed will be
any less effective against the new variants.
While Europe has some of the best-resourced healthcare
systems in the world, the scale of the effort means some
countries are calling on retired medics to help while others
have loosened rules for who is allowed to give the injections.
Beyond hospitals and care homes, sports halls and convention
centres left vacant by lockdown restrictions will become venues
for mass inoculations.
Vaccinations also started in Norway, which is not a member
of the EU bloc.
"I feel like a historical figure ... almost like the first
man on the Moon," said care home resident Svein Andersen, 67, as
he received the country's first shot in the capital, Oslo.
After European governments were criticised for failing to
work together to counter the spread of the virus in early 2020,
the goal this time is to ensure that there is equal access
across the region.
But even then, Hungary on Saturday jumped the gun on the
official roll-out by administering shots to frontline workers at
hospitals in the capital Budapest. The Netherlands said it will
not start vaccinating until Jan. 8.
Slovakia also went ahead with some inoculations of
healthcare staff on Saturday and in Germany, a small number of
people at a care home were inoculated a day early too.
"We don't want to waste that one day that the vaccine loses
shelf life," Karsten Fischer, from the pandemic staff of the
Harz district in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, told
broadcaster MDR.
(Additional reporting by Catarina Demony in Lisbon, Silke
Koltrowitz in Vienna, Robert Muller in Prague, Tsvetelia Tsolova
in Sofia, Igor Ilic in Zagreb, Nerijus Adomaitis in oslo,
Michele Kambas in Athens and Benoit Van Overstraeten in Paris;
Writing by Mark John and Andrew Heavens; Editing by David Clarke
and Nick Macfie)
