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On December 26, the first Pfizer vaccines will arrive in Greece, on December 27, the vaccination against coronavirus in our country begins.
The vaccination in our country starts on December 27, as announced by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, fully confirming the report of ethnos.gr for V-Day in our country. The vaccines will be received on December 26 by the Ministry of Health and the next day the vaccination will start, according to the schedule.
According to the plan, Pfizer will be the first to be received by the employees in the National Health System. This will be followed immediately by our fellow citizens over 65. In this age category are included a total of about 2.4 million citizens. The Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis chaired this morning a wide-ranging meeting on the National Vaccination Plan that took place in the management room of the General Secretariat for Civil Protection.
The introductory position of the prime minister states the following:
“Good morning.
I am glad today to have the opportunity to visit the Civil Protection Operations Centre, where a large team from the Ministries of Health, Digital Policy and Citizen Protection will henceforth operate, which will undertake its complex but also extremely important task of the vaccination process so that as many of our fellow citizens as possible are shielded as soon as possible, so that the vaccine really becomes the beginning of the end of the pandemic. As you are well aware, in the face of great difficulties we oppose an elaborate program.
According to the latest information we have from the European Medicines Agency, the approval of the first vaccine is expected to be that of Pfizer on 22 December. Distributions in Europe will begin shortly thereafter. We estimate that the first batches of the vaccine will be in our country on December 26 and from the next, from December 27, we will be able to have the first vaccinations in five reference hospitals in Athens and immediately after in Thessaloniki.
As you know and following the recommendations of the National Vaccination Committee there will be a strict prioritization in relation to which of our fellow citizens should be vaccinated first. Employees of the National Health System will obviously precede, primarily our heroes, who have lifted so much weight in recent months working in our hospitals, in the Health Centres, but of course also the guests in nursing homes.
And followed immediately by our fellow citizens over 65, we estimate that in this age category are included a total of about 2.4 million of our fellow citizens. And our first fellow citizens, who will be vaccinated in our country, will be a nurse and an elderly fellow citizen.
It is true that the central negotiation made by Brussels on vaccine delivery procedures created a small gap in relation to the initial expectations that had been cultivated. I would like to reiterate once again that these negotiations are carried out centrally by the European Commission, each country receives its vaccines according to its population and there is absolutely no differentiation from this policy and the vaccines reach all European countries a little -very the same day, each batch will arrive on the same day, and then obviously the responsibility shifts to the countries so that they can follow the national vaccination strategy as quickly as possible and as safely as possible.
I want to reiterate and emphasize the importance of the vaccination process for our older citizens. Just look at the data from the hospitals. They represent, unfortunately, 85% of our fellow human beings who have lost their lives since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 60% of the intubated. Their armour, then, is valuable not only for themselves, but it is also the one that will ultimately provide us with relief for the health structures and for their people, who today lift a huge weight.
And of course, we should know that only when we reach close to 70% of vaccination of the entire Greek population will we be able to speak with confidence that we have left the pandemic behind.
As you know, conditions of safe transport, proper storage spaces, ways of fast transfer of the vaccine to the 1,018 vaccination centres, which have been organized in every corner of the country, have already been provided and I must emphasize that everyone will help in this effort. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, Armed Forces – the Chief of our National Health Organisation is here with us – Civil Protection, Police.
We are all a fist together; we are a team to be able to launch this process. The country has never before implemented such a plan, the last major vaccination campaigns were carried out with completely different data after the Second World War. Almost none of us remember them. But this campaign will have the pleasure of being represented in communication by the head of the Vaccination Committee, Mrs. Theodoridou, whom I want to thank again, for what she has done, for what she will do from now on as its role will be absolutely crucial.
And of course at the operational level from Mario Themistocleous, the Secretary General of Primary Care, who also has the responsibility to coordinate this very big effort, which involves so many different bodies and so many different Ministries. Of course we will always continue to have the support of Professor Sotiris Tsiodras, whom I thank once again for all he has offered during these months of war against the pandemic.
We have said that the leaders of the parliamentary groups, political and state leadership will be the first to vaccinate in this way to show our confidence in science, but I want to say once again, draw everyone’s attention, the pandemic obviously will not end when the vaccination process begins.
Prevention and shielding are not separate phases, they are two parallel processes and restrictive measures can only be lifted when the declining trend of the pandemic is consolidated and we will need to keep our social contacts limited for a long time, society will tend to one hand on the vaccine and with the other she will continue to lift the mask on her face. And as the days of the holidays come to repeat once again, my appeal to all of us to be careful next door, to limit our contacts to the absolute minimum.
We will have a different Christmas, this time, another Christmas will come, and other New Years will come, that we will be able to celebrate as we have always celebrated. This Christmas and this New Year will be and must be different and I am absolutely sure that our fellow citizens will respond with a sense of responsibility and will do what is right. Right for themselves, right for the country.
I conclude by saying that vaccination, when done well, will write the last lines in the epilogue of this great battle against the pandemic and will be the prelude to a new era of security and prosperity, which I am sure will dawn when we leave good behind us this unprecedented adventure. As we have said, it will bring, as the title of the plan suggests, it will bring more freedom.
The vaccine not only frees us from the yoke of health threat, but is also a passport to recovering our small and large freedoms, which have experienced temporary but necessary restrictions. I stop here to go to our presentations now “.
For full report in Greek click on source link:- https://www.ethnos.gr/politiki/138047_embolio-stis-27-dekembrioy-xekina-o-emboliasmos-me-skeyasma-tis-pfizer
