The global vaccination campaign begins
With the starting gun fired, European health authorities have already started vaccination campaigns this Sunday in Europe, after England, the United States and several Latin American countries. Just one year after the appearance of Covid-19, its antidote is available.
The German BioNTech and American Pfizer vaccines, which must be kept at -70 degrees, are in secret locations under surveillance, ready to be administered in nursing homes, to health personnel, and later extended to the rest of the population.
The hope raised by the vaccines has been clouded by the emergence of a new British strain of Covid-19, up to 70 percent more contagious according to experts, which has already been detected in several countries on the continent: France, Italy, Germany and Spain, as well as Gibraltar.
One of the questions now being asked around the world is whether the spread of a new strain of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, in the south of the United Kingdom: will it disrupt the vaccines already being administered?
The vaccination against covid-19 began this Sunday in Europe with the elderly and their carers in nursing homes, at a time when cases of this disease already affect 1% of the world's population - more than 78 million inhabitants - and deaths have reached 1.74 million on the planet, according to figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO).
In Germany, the EU's most populous country with 83 million inhabitants and which has been under drastic restrictions on public life for a week, the authorities of the Länder are ready to start the vaccination campaign tomorrow. Germany expects to receive 300 million doses this year, either through the EU or through additional contracts concluded in parallel with various pharmaceutical companies.
France received the first 19,500 doses of Pfizer's vaccine on Saturday from the pharmacist's warehouse in Belgium. Escorted by the Gendarmerie, a refrigerated truck transported the doses to a hospital logistics centre on the outskirts of Paris.
The first doses of the Pfizer vaccine of all those that will arrive in Spain were from early Saturday morning in a logistics centre that Pfizer Pharmaceuticals has in the province of Guadalajara (centre), from where they will be distributed to other parts of the country. Spain will receive a total of 4,591,275 doses of the vaccine.
The vaccine has already been administered to the first Spaniards: an elderly person and a worker from a nursing home in the city of Guadalajara and will continue the vaccination in the rest of Spain.
In Italy, the van with the first 9,750 doses of the anti-Covid vaccine from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer-Biontech, was escorted by the Carabinieri, yesterday from Belgium to the Spallanzani Hospital in Rome and from there they will be distributed to the other regions for the vaccination campaign to be carried out throughout Europe.
The first batch of 9,750 covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech arrived yesterday in Athens, where the immunisation campaign called Operation Freedom will begin this Sunday.
Sweden, which for months opted for a lax strategy in the face of the pandemic, but whose mortality rate is now five times that of Denmark and ten times that of Finland or Norway, is also starting its vaccination campaign among the most vulnerable groups on Sunday.
On 21 December, the 78-year-old US president-elect received the first dose of vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech at a public event to encourage people to get vaccinated. Like a Christmas present, the vaccine from Modern Pharmaceuticals has already reached 3,700 health centres in the USA. After receiving the approval of the authorities, 3.5 million doses of this preparation are added to those of the Pfizer vaccine which began to be distributed a week ago throughout the country.
Three Latin American countries began their Covid-19 vaccination campaign on Thursday 24 December. Just hours after receiving the first doses of the vaccine from US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer/BioNtech, Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica began their vaccination campaigns.
Following criticism of the government for having only 3,000 initial vaccines, Mexico received a second shipment of 42,900 doses from Pfizer on Saturday. Next Monday, the vaccination will continue to be given to medical personnel in the capital and will also be extended to health workers in the north of the country, Monterrey (Nuevo León).
The Argentine government announced on Saturday that next Tuesday it will start the country-wide vaccination campaign against covid-19, after it received a first batch of 300,000 doses of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V last Thursday.
According to official sources, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez led a video conference meeting today with the governors of the Argentine provinces and the mayor of the city of Buenos Aires to finalize the details of the operation. The doses of the Sputnik V vaccine will be available in each province on Monday, so it was agreed that the inoculation process will begin on Tuesday morning.
President Jair Bolsonaro said on Saturday that he does not feel pressure for Brazil to begin vaccination against the coronavirus and said he does not care that his country, one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, is left behind in the race for immunization. This Saturday, as Brazil celebrates its tenth month of the health crisis as one of the three most affected countries in the world, with some 190,500 deaths and 7.5 million infected, Bolsonaro took a walk through the streets of Brasilia, visited some establishments and greeted various supporters without wearing masks or any protective equipment.
MIDDLE EAST
Kuwait launched the Covid-19 vaccination campaign on Thursday after receiving doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, as several of its neighbours have already done, Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Hamad Al-Sabah inaugurated the campaign upon receiving the vaccine, according to official Kuwaiti media.
The city of Dubai likewise announced the start of the free vaccination campaign against COVID-19, in which it will supply the vaccine to Pfizer and BioNTech, while the capital Abu Dhabi has already begun to inoculate the vaccine, in this case Sinopharm's. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has thus become the first Arab country to kick off a nationwide vaccination campaign, which will give priority to people over 60, with chronic diseases and frontline health workers in the fight against the disease.
Israel has more than 3,500 daily cases of coronavirus infection, something that has not happened since early October and could force the government to implement further restrictions, including a possible third confinement. The country began the vaccination campaign this Sunday, with health workers and several politicians to set an example, including Netanyahu and the head of state, Reuvén Rivlin, and yesterday began to vaccinate those over 60 and members of risk groups.
However, the coronavirus vaccines will start arriving in Palestine in two weeks through the World Health Organization (WHO), Kamal al Shakhra, the Palestinian Ministry of Health's head of pandemic management, said today.
Unlike Israel, which has already bought millions of vaccines and inoculated some 210,000 people, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) does not yet have supplies or reveal a plan to immunise the nearly five million people in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, received the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine on 24 December in Saudi Arabia, where the national vaccination campaign began, according to the official Saudi Arabian agency SPA. According to the Saudi Ministry of Health, 70% of the population that was not exposed to Covid-19 will be vaccinated free of charge before the end of 2021, with the aim of returning to pre-pandemic normality. The national vaccination campaign will be divided into three stages.
The Sultanate of Oman launched its vaccination campaign against Covid-19 on Sunday, two days before the lifting of the closure of its borders due to the emergence of a variant of the coronavirus.Oman, which received Pfizer BioNTech vaccines, is the last country in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to undertake a vaccination campaign.
The CDC in Africa (the African Union's disease control and prevention agency) says that immunization cannot begin until the second quarter of 2021, probably between April and June, and that it will take two to three years to vaccinate at least 60% of the population.
This will allow the continent to achieve herd immunity, i.e. a sufficient proportion of the population will be immune to the virus through vaccination and/or previous infection to make it unlikely to spread from one person to another.
An analysis by the WHO has revealed that some 40 countries are ready to deploy a Covid-19 vaccine if it becomes available.
However, not all these countries are at the same level.
On 9 November, King Mohammed VI of Morocco ordered a massive vaccination campaign against Covid-19, to be free for all citizens.
Algeria will avoid rushing and will buy the vaccine when it has sufficient guarantees and will start the vaccination process from January 2021. Therefore, to date, Algeria has not collected the material or chosen the vaccine. While COVID-19 patients are generally treated with hydroxychloroquine.
It is most likely that Russia will start producing its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in Egypt.
Some countries have established working groups to define a mechanism for vaccine supply.
At a summit between Africa and China, China promised to give priority to African countries once their vaccine is ready.
Among the countries China promised to support are Zambia and Burkina Faso.
Kenya has openly stated that it will approach China. It has also ordered 24 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine (through the Covax programme), enough to cover 20% of the country's population.
Kenya and South Africa test the Oxford - Astrazeneca vaccine, South Africa tests the Johnson and Johnson vaccine
ASIA
The Government of Singapore announced this Sunday that it will begin supplying the covid-19 vaccine from Wednesday and will start the process among health personnel with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The Ministry of Health said in a statement that as of February it will be the turn of people aged 70 or over, and later on vaccination will start in the younger population.
On 26 December the Russian Ministry of Health authorised the vaccination of the over-60s against covid-19 with the Russian preparation Sputnik V.
A first shipment of 1.2 million doses of the vaccine manufactured by the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac against covid-19, tested since August in Indonesia, arrived in Indonesia at the beginning of the month, and a second shipment with 1.8 million doses will arrive in January.
Turkey will start using the Chinese Sinovac vaccine against the coronavirus from next Monday, after a phase of clinical trials in which it has verified an effectiveness of 91%, with few side effects, announced this Thursday the Turkish Minister of Health, Fahrettin Koca.