The countries of the European Union have started their vaccination campaign against the coronavirus

The world passed the barrier of 80 million coronavirus infections this Sunday after registering more than 511,000 new cases and 7,077 deaths in the past 24 hours, accumulating nearly 1.76 million deaths, according to the report released by the Johns Hopkins University (JHU), while European Union (EU) countries began immunizing older people and health workers that day.

The disease-affected country in the world remains the United States, where one in 1,000 people has died from the disease, which to date has claimed the lives of at least 332,000 people.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, some countries are still facing an uncontrollable spread of the virus. In this context, the countries of the European Union (EU) began this Sunday vaccination with the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.

Today is “Vaccine Day” or “V-Day” against Covid-19, which has claimed more than half a million lives in the old continent and the economies of countries in crisis due to the paralysis of containment protocols and curfews, the Europa Press agency reported.

However, despite the glimmers of hope expressed with the administration of vaccines to the first of 450 million citizens in the 27 EU member states, experts agree that the population will take time to return to normal. , whose return It is not expected until at least June 2021.

Germany, which is among the 10 most affected countries with 1.65 million cases and nearly 30,000 deaths, as well as Hungary and Slovakia, decided not to wait and began administering the injection in late Saturday afternoon.

Edith Kwoizalla, 101, who lives in a retirement home in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, became one of the first Europeans to receive the dose.

This Sunday was followed by Spain, the ninth country most affected by the pandemic, with 1.85 million infected and 49,824 deaths, where today a 96-year-old woman was the first person vaccinated against the Covid-19 and sued Mónica Tapias, 48. years old, worker of the residence.

“Today Araceli and Mónica represent a new stage full of hope. A day of emotion and confidence”, wrote the president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, on Twitter.

Italy has also started vaccinations, where some 10,000 doses of the drug arrived on its first disembarkation on a date “which will live on in us forever”, as Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has published.

Meanwhile, in the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Andrej Babis has become one of the first European leaders to receive the vaccine, at the Central Military Hospital in Prague, and in front of television cameras.

In Sweden, Gun-Britt Johnsson, 91, was the first resident of the country to receive the injection in a center in the town of Mjolby, 230 kilometers from Stockholm.

“It’s wonderful not to be sick,” she later said of a vaccine that the country’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven called a “light in the dark” and “an extraordinary moment. for science and humanity “.

In France, where the first case in Europe was detected on January 24, the first inoculated is Mauricette, 78, admitted to the care unit of the René-Muret hospital in Sevran.

“Reason and science must guide us. We have a new weapon against the virus: the vaccine. Let us stand united. We are proud of our health system”, declared President Emmanuel Macron on Twitter, while a BVA poll showed that a little more than half of the French were “reluctant” to receive it.

In Portugal, Porto was the scene of the first vaccine administered, at the São Joao hospital, where a nurse vaccinated infectologist António Sarmento in front of the Minister of Health, Marta Temido, and dozens of photojournalists.

Also, in Norway, the first immunized was Svein Andersen, in the nursing home in Oslo, where he expressed that he felt “strange” and added with humor: “It almost seems that I wrote l story, as the first man to walk on the moon. Like Neil Armstrong. “

The same happened in Denmark with a 79-year-old man from a residence in Odense, Leif Hasselberg.

“There is light at the end of the tunnel after the most difficult year since World War II,” said Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, adding that the emergence of the vaccine is a “big turning point for the whole world” while attending the vaccination. .

In Poland, the first to be vaccinated was a nurse, Alicja Jakubowska, director of nursing at the Interior Ministry hospital in Warsaw.

On the other hand, Ireland and the Netherlands will not start their vaccinations until next Wednesday, in the first case, and on January 8, in the second.

Africa also made the news this Sunday, after a new strain of Covid-19 was detected in Nigeria, different from those in South Africa and the United Kingdom, but which “shares some mutations” with the latter, reports the African Center of Excellence Genomics of Infectious Diseases (Acegid), cited by the AFP news agency.

“I ask people not to extrapolate. Nothing shows us, for example, that the strain found in England would have the same effects in Nigeria” and vice versa, underlined Professor Christian Happi, molecular biologist who participated in the sequencing genetics of this new variant.

In Asia, the Chinese capital, Beijing, has taken extreme measures against Covid-19 with massive tests in more than a million people in at-risk neighborhoods, amid fears of an increase in cases during travel in year-end, vacation, and the National Health Commission urged all districts to go into “emergency mode”, isolating the regions.