German authorities will begin administering first vaccinations on Sunday, the health minister has said, after Europe’s medicines regulator on Monday approved the use of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
Berlin welcomes the approval of the vaccine by the European Medicines Agency, Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Monday, describing the move as a milestone in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
“Vaccination is paving the way for us out of the crisis. And we’re doing everything we can to take this path as quickly as possible,” Spahn said. The minister announced that the German authorities will begin the first vaccination in the country’s elderly homes on December 27.
Last week, the Berlin city government had already said that Germany’s federal states were preparing to roll out the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on December 27, adding that priority would be given to seniors in care homes.
The statement came after a conference between Spahn and health officials from the country’s 16 states. The minister reportedly expressed frustration at that time at the lack of approval of a vaccine partly developed in Germany when Britain and the United States were rolling it out.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased to 1,510,652 as of Monday, while the reported death toll was 26,275, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
As the country struggles with a rise in coronavirus infections, Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday urged Germans to avoid visiting family members over Christmas and instead to use video calls for greetings.
In France, Health Minister Olivier Veran said earlier on Monday that his country was also preparing to start the Covid-19 vaccination program on December 27.
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