BERLIN – A 101-year-old woman in an elderly care home yesterday became the first person in Germany to be inoculated against the coronavirus, a day before the official vaccination campaign is scheduled to get under way in both the country and European Union.
Edith Kwoizalla was one of some 40 residents and 10 staff at the care home in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt to receive a jab of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the facility’s manager, Tobias Krueger, told AFP.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine became the first to get the go-ahead for use in the West, after Britain gave its approval on December 2.
As other nations, from the United States to Saudi Arabia and Singapore followed suit, Germany impatiently prodded the EU’s drugs regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), to bring forward its decision from December 29.
EMA finally gave its green light more than a week early, on December 21.
On the same night, the European Commission declared that the entire bloc will start the inoculation operation today.
“For us, every day counts,” Immo Kramer, a vaccination centre official for the region, told MDR public television.
Yesterday, tens of thousands of doses were delivered to regional health authorities, which then distributed them to local vaccination centres.
Elderly care home residents, people aged 80 and over, and care staff will be the first to get the jab.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn called it a “day of hope”.
“The vaccine is an essential key in conquering the pandemic,” he told a news conference.
“It is the key that will allow us to take back our lives”, he said, but warned that getting everyone immunised will be a “long-haul” effort.
Germany, which appeared to fare relatively well in the first coronavirus wave in the spring, has been hit hard by a second wave.
According to the latest data compiled by the Robert Koch Institute, 14,455 new infections were reported in the last 24 hours, as well as 240 deaths, bringing total fatalities to 29,422. – AFP, December 27, 2020
