A nurse prepares a syringe with the COVID-19 vaccine at Santa Maria Della Pieta hospital in Rome
COVID vaccination has begun across the European Union with a publicity campaign calling on the public to “believe in science.”
The vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer is the same already approved for use in Britain, the United States and Canada.
The first Italian to be inoculated was a nurse, Claudia Alivernini. “Today I’m here as a citizen but most of all as a nurse, to represent my category and all the health workers who choose to believe in science,” she said as she was vaccinated at the Spallanzani infectious disease hospital in Rome — the site where a couple visiting from Wuhan became Italy’s first confirmed cases in January.
US tariffs have had Von der Leyen bowing in submission, while comments from the former European Central Bank leader call for more European political integration and less individual state sovereignty. All this adds up to more pain and austerity ahead, argues NICK WRIGHT
