MADRID/ROMEO—Europe launched a massive COVID-19 vaccination drive on Sunday with pensioners and medics lining up to get the first shots to see off a pandemic that has crippled economies and claimed more than 1.7 million lives worldwide.
“Thank God,” 96-year-old Araceli Hidalgo said as she became the first person in Spain to have a vaccine. She told staff at her care home in Guadalajara near Madrid she hadn’t felt a thing. “Let’s see if we can make this virus go away.”
In Italy, the first country in Europe to record significant numbers of infections, 29-year-old nurse Claudia Alivernini was one of three medical staff at the head of the queue for the shot developed by Pfizer an…
Keep on reading: ‘The beginning of the end’: Europe rolls out vaccines to see off pandemic