Swiss swift start on Covid-19 vaccinations
Listen | Print By Robin MILLARD (AFP) Dec 23, 2020 in World
Switzerland started its Covid-19 vaccine rollout on Wednesday, with a care home resident in her 90s receiving the first shot just four days after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was authorised.
The woman, who lives in the Lucerne region in central Switzerland, was the first person in continental Europe immunised with the Pfizer-BioNTech jab in a vaccination campaign.
Switzerland is battling stubbornly high coronavirus cases, recording around 5,000 fresh infections and 100 new deaths on Wednesday, in a country of 8.6 million people.
From Tuesday, bars and restaurants began closing again across the country in a bid to rein in the outbreak, while flights to and from Britain and South Africa have been banned following the discovery of a new variant of the virus that UK officials believe spreads far more easi