Europe Launches Mass Vaccination Program

The European Union officially began its covid-19 vaccination campaign yesterday. European Commission President, Ursula Von Der Leyen, declared yesterday, today and tomorrow as “EU Vaccination Days”. Similar to the U.S., the first people to receive doses of the vaccine were largely elderly or frontline medical workers. Leyen says getting the vaccine is the only way out of this pandemic and stresses the importance especially given the new, possibly more contagious coronavirus variant that has been identified in the UK. The variant has also been detected in Japan, and the country has now banned entry to foreign nationals through the end of January to contain it. In the U.S., 1 in 1,000 Americans have now died from covid-19 since the nation’s first reported infection last January. The United State’s hospitalization rate for covid-19 infections has been hovering above 100,000 for 26 consecutive days now.