Nurse to be first person to receive COVID-19 vaccine in Italy – Xinhua

ROME, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) – A nurse will be the first person to receive the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine to prevent coronavirus disease in Italy, health officials said on Tuesday.

As previously planned by the country’s health minister, the first vaccines will be administered on December 27, along with other European Union (EU) member states.

The date was recently set as “V-Day” among EU member states to start COVID-19 vaccination of the first groups of people, namely those most exposed to the virus (such as health workers), and the most vulnerable (such as elders).

The first five doses of the COVID vaccine will be administered on Sunday, December 27, according to the National Institute of Infectious Diseases Lazzaro Spallanzani.

Spallanzani is a public research institute and an Italian reference hospital for infectious diseases and for the national coronavirus emergency. It was the first center in Europe to have isolated the DNA sequence of the coronavirus in February.

The institute specified that the first five people to be vaccinated would be “a nurse, a health worker, a researcher and two doctors”.

Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza on Monday welcomed the EU’s approval of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine, saying it would open “a new phase” in the fight against the pandemic.

The EU gave the green light for the use of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19 in the block on Monday evening, hours after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) made a positive scientific assessment

The EMA has recommended the use of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine to prevent COVID-19 in people over 16 years of age.

Meanwhile, a report showed Tuesday that more than 100,000 cases of coronavirus infections among workers have been recorded in Italy from the start of the pandemic until the end of November.

“Infections caused by COVID-19 at work reported to INAIL (National Institute of Insurance against Work Accidents) as of November 30 amounted to 104,328,” said INAIL, the Italian public body protection of workers against physical injuries and occupational diseases.

Coronavirus infections among workers accounted for 20.9% of all workplace accidents reported to the institute and amounted to nearly 13% of all active infections during the same period, according to INAIL.

“The second wave of infections had a greater impact than the first in the workplace,” INAIL said.

“A peak of work-related (coronavirus) infections was indeed recorded over the period October-November, with nearly 49,000 accident reports – or 47% of the total – against around 46,500 recorded during the March. and April, ”he explained.

After the outbreak of the pandemic here at the end of February, the Italian government imposed a nationwide lockdown from March 10 to May 3, when all productive and economic activities except essential ones were halted.

During the current second wave, productive activities continued with the exception of some restrictions on business activities such as stores and malls in parts of the country when necessary.

As of Monday, the latest statistics available indicated a total of 1,964,054 cases of coronavirus in Italy, including 613,582 active infections, 1,281,258 recoveries and 69,214 deaths, according to the health ministry. Enditem