A cargo plane by international courier company DHL arrives at Athens International airport in Spatra, east of Athens, carrying vaccines against COVID-19, on Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
ATHENS – It’s The Big Hope – that it will slow and then bring a halt to the COVID-19 pandemic – but vaccines are only slowly being delivered to Greece in small batches instead of the millions expected.
The first group was only 9,750, from the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the German firm BioNTech, but requires two doses three weeks apart, good for only 4,875 people, a long line of politicians waiting to get them first.
The second batch of 83,850 – enough for 41,925 people – arrived Dec. 29 on a special flight and will be guarded by Greek police and anti-terrorist squads because of its value and its need to be kept at -72 degrees Celsius (-161.6 Fahrenheit) in deep freeze containers.
Getting the vaccine isn’t mandatory, with a number of anti-vaccination groups in the country and surveys showing half of Greeks don’t think it’s safe or effective after being rolled out in record time.
The government has five central storage points around the country, from where the vaccines will be sent to scores of vaccination centers although the doses must be kept ultra frozen along the way.
A Health Ministry official, Marios Themistokleous said Greece will receive 419,250 Pfizer vaccine doses by the end of January 2021 and another 333,450 in February. At the end of March, the country will have received a total of 1,255,800 million doses.
The government aims to have vaccinated 85,000 people by the end of January 2021, said Kathimerini and after the Pfizer-BioNTech version expects to get 240,000 doses from Moderna, a company based in Cambridge, Mass., which can be kept in a refrigerator and needs only one shot.
Greek authorities also expect 500,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s at the end of January, followed by another 800,000 at the end of February, 1,500,000 at the end of March and 2,200,000 doses in April.
But that vaccine’s trials showed only 62 percent effectiveness although company officials said it’s 100 percent effective against the most serious cases of the Coronavirus.
The other vaccines are 95 percent effective but the government said people will not be allowed to pick which one they prefer and other vaccines are expected to follow from Frances’s Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson in the United States and Curevac in Germany as health officials said at least 70 percent of the country’s population of 10,423,054 people – or 7,296,137 people – must be inoculated to overcome the pandemic.
But according to the government’s figures there will be enough vaccines for only 4,367,900, almost three million too short to bring the herd immunity needed to defeat the Coronavirus unless more vaccines keep coming in 2021.
THESSALONIKI – A 27-year-old man accused of spiking a woman's drink at a New Year's celebration and raping a 27-year-old woman was acquitted by a council of judges who said she lied about the alleged assault.
FALMOUTH, MA – The police in Falmouth have identified the victim in an accident involving a car plunging into the ocean on February 20, NBC10 Boston reported.
PHILADELPHIA – The Federation of Hellenic Societies of Philadelphia and Greater Delaware Valley announced that the Evzones, the Presidential Guard of Greece will be participating in the Philadelphia Greek Independence Day Parade on March 20.
NEW YORK – The National Herald’s Happenings of the Week as have been reported at the print and digital editions of TNH and presented by the TNH Editor Eraklis Diamataris.
Sign up for a subscription
Want to save this article? Get a subscription to access this feature and more!
To purchase a gift subscription, please log out of your account, and purchase the subscription with a new email ID.
On April 2, 2021, we celebrated The National Herald’s 106th Anniversary. Help us maintain our independent journalism and continue serving Hellenism worldwide.
In order to deliver a more personalized, responsive, and improved experience, we use cookies to remember information about how you use this site. By Continuing to access the website, you agree that we will store data in a cookie as outlined in our Privacy Policy.
We use cookies on our site to personalize your experience, bring you the most relevant content, show you the most useful ads, and to help report any issues with our site. You can update your preferences at any time by visiting preferences. By selecting Accept, you consent to our use of cookies. To learn more about how your data is used, visit our cookie policy.
You’re reading 1 of 3 free articles this month. Get unlimited access to The National Herald. or Log In
You’ve reached your limit of free articles for this month. Get unlimited access to the best in independent Greek journalism starting as low as $1/week.