COVID-19 vaccination programs begin in EU nations

유럽 코로나19 백신접종 본격 개시…"새로운 무기 생겼다"

The European Union has kickstarted its mass vaccination program.
Sunday's roll out came a day after Germany, Hungary and Slovakia gave some of their citizens COVID-19 vaccine shots first.
Lee Seung-jae reports.
The EU began its mass vaccination program to inoculate some 450-million people across its 27-nation bloc on Sunday,... less than a week after the EU approved the use of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine.
The vaccination program comes weeks after the U.K. and the U.S. began their own programs,... with more than 600-thousand Brits and nearly 2 million Americans having received the first of the two-dose regimen.
Despite EU nations agreeing to rollout the program on the same date,... Germany, Hungary and Slovakia began administering their vaccines a day earlier.
Among the first to receive the vaccine,... was a 101-year-old woman in Germany.
"I think (I feel) good, yes, good. I don't feel anything. The vaccination went well. sometimes it feels a bit, but here it didn't."
On Sunday,... Italy and Portugal began inoculating their health-care workers,... while residents at elderly care centers received the first shots in Denmark and Sweden.
In France,... a 78-year-old woman living in a care home was the first French person to receive the shot.
In a video message on Saturday,... European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed hope that the vaccination program will help people start traveling, meeting friends and family again,... and have normal holidays.
Despite her message of hope,... she stressed there's long way ahead until then,... calling on people to continue being careful.
The start of the EU's vaccination program comes amid an effort to contain the mutated strain that the U.K. government says spreads much more easily.
However, experts say the current vaccine still protects against the new strain.
Lee Seung-jae, Arirang News.