NICOSIA, CYPRUS — Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades said the countdown has started for defeating an “invisible enemy” after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against the coronavirus.

Anastasiades got the shot at a Nicosia health center on Monday, a day after elderly nursing home residents and front-line medical staff were the first to be inoculated.

Praising health care workers for their efforts to help beat back the spread of COVID-19, Anastasiades pleaded with citizens to continue abiding by virus restrictions — including a night-time curfew — despite a pervading sense of fatigue and a curb on individual freedoms.

Anastasiades said Cyprus will procure enough of the vaccine to inoculate the entire population of around 1.1 million, including Turkish Cypriot citizens who live in the ethnically split country’s breakaway north.