In Vaccine Drive, EU Turns to Super-Freezers, Church Leaders
Bloomberg
12/21/2020
James Paton
(Bloomberg) -- The road to protecting the European Union’s 450 million people against the coronavirus begins in a small community in Belgium best known for brewing beer.
Refrigerated cargo trucks carrying hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses are set to roll out of Pfizer Inc.’s factory in Puurs -- 15 miles south of Antwerp -- in the coming days, marking the start of an unprecedented effort to deliver the shot to 27 countries at the same time.
From Malta to Finland, the EU is about to embark on an immunization campaign aimed at halting a pathogen that’s ravaged the continent this year. Trailing the U.K. and U.S., the bloc has been feeling the heat, especially because the first vaccine was pioneered in Germany. The shot developed by BioNTech SE and Pfizer was cleared by the European medicines regulator on Monday, paving the way for the first people to be immunized within days.