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VACCINE

First doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine arrive in German regions

The first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine have now been delivered to all of Germany's 16 states, the country's DPA news agency has reported, ahead of the first vaccinations on Sunday

First doses of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine arrive in German regions
Vaccines are placed in storage at the central warehouse in North Rhine-Westfalia. Photo: picture alliance / dpa / State Chancellery of North Rhine-Westphalia | Mark Hermenau
Germany's health minister, Jens Spahn, at a press briefing on Saturday morning described the arrival of the first doses as a “merry Christmas message,” and called on as many citizens as possible to get vaccinated in “a national show of strength”.  
 
“At this moment, trucks are on the road all over Europe to deliver the vaccines,” he said. “The vaccination centres are ready to go. The vaccination teams are in place.” 
 
Berlin's health chief, Dilek Kalayci, said on Twitter that the first 9,750 doses had arrived in the German capital at 10.20am. 
 

 
“Even if it's still some time before we reach herd immunity against Corona reach,” she wrote in an earlier tweet. “For me today is a day of hope.” 
 

According to Germany's state broadcaster ARD, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state, also received its 9,750 doses on Saturday morning, with the insulated boxes then stored in a secret warehouse. 
 
The 9,750 doses earmarked for Bavaria were split between two warehouses, one in Erlangen and the other in Munich. 
 
Health officials from Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt also confirmed to ARD that they had received their doses. 
 
In the first quarter of 2021, German health authorities expect to receive 10m doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
 
Moderna, whose vaccine is expected to be approved at the start of the year, should also be able to supply 1.5m doses if its vaccine is approved as expected at the start of next year. 
 
 
At the press conference, Spahn argued that those who got vaccinated were performing a service to the nation.
 
“Those who take part will be saving lives,” he said.  
 
 
 
 
 

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VACCINE

Vaccine scramble: How Spaniards want Covid jabs more than other Europeans

Whilst the EU warns that unused doses due to vaccine scepticism are piling up, Spaniards of all ages want to achieve immunity against Covid-19 as soon as possible, the data shows. 

Vaccine scramble: How Spaniards want Covid jabs more than other Europeans
People queue to get the vaccine in Barcelona. Photo: Lluis Gené/AFP

In Spain, where the Covid-19 rollout has gone from one of the slowest in the EU to currently one of the fastest, pretty much everyone wants to get vaccinated. 

With priority groups almost fully immunised, Spain is still beating daily records with 600,000 to 700,000 doses administered every day. 

The spike in cases among the country’s young population has led several regions to bring forward jabs for teens and twenty-somethings ahead of people in their thirties.

Despite the apparent lack of concern for the pandemic witnessed  in packed squares and streets over the past weeks, young people who have been able to take advantage of the vaccine offer have headed en masse to the vaccination centres. 

When an Asturian youth called Ana Santos told a local newspaper that “after the elderly, it should be our turn to get vaccinated as it’s not as if people in their forties go out, is it?”, her comments went down like a tonne of bricks among this age group, who demanded it was their turn to reach full immunisation first. 

Vaccine scepticism hasn’t been a problem for Spain as it has been for other countries, with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen launching a warning recently that vaccine supplies are piling up, even though Brussels has reached its target of providing enough doses to fully vaccinate 70 percent of EU adults.

“If we look at the statistics, more and more doses remain unused,” von der Leyen told journalists in Strasbourg.

“This is linked to the fact that there is a greater distribution of vaccines, but in part also due to doubts about vaccination,” adding that it was crucial to reach the most sceptical parts of the population” in the face of the “worrying” presence of the Delta variant.

“Traditionally in Spain, we have had much less resistance or rejection towards vaccines, that’s always been the case,” vaccine expert at the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP) Ángel Hernández-Merino told 20minutos. 

“In any vaccination programme, it’s vital to count on the population being willing to accept the vaccination”.

A June 2021 Eurobarometer study found that 49 percent of people in Spain want to get vaccinated “as soon as possible”, the highest rate in the entire EU (32 percent EU average). 

Whereas an average of 9 percent of EU citizens don’t ever want to get vaccinated, the rate in Spain is 4 percent.  Around 63 percent of Spaniards told Eurobarometer that they couldn’t understand why people are hesitant to get vaccinated and 71 percent said Covid vaccines are the only way for the pandemic to end. 

In Belgium, around a third of the population doesn’t want to get vaccinated.

In other countries where in the earlier stages of the Covid vaccination campaign it seemed  that available doses were easily used up it’s now becoming evident that sprinting through the age groups doesn’t guarantee that everyone is being vaccinated. 

Germany, the UK and the US, all seen as examples to Spain of how to quickly immunise a population, have all seen their campaigns slow down due to hesitancy and the summer holidays.

Spain’s Health Ministry doesn’t give data on how many people have rejected the vaccine and why, but stats do show that already more than half of the population (57.5 percent) have at least one dose and 43.3 percent are fully vaccinated. 

The Spanish government has stuck to its objective of vaccinating 70 percent of the country’s 47 million people before the end of August, even though it did fall short of its June target by more than half a million doses. 

Rather than vaccine scepticism, what’s been holding up Spain’s inoculation campaign have been doubts over the administration of second AstraZeneca vaccines and the decision to keep a reserve in case the country experienced delivery setbacks as it has in the past, with 2.9 million doses in storage reported in late June.

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