[WATCH] COVID-19 vaccine arrives in Malta, Abela heralds ‘return to normality’

Malta will start rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine on 27 December as a first consignment of the COVID-19 made touchdown in Malta at 10:42 am.

Prime Minister Robert Abela and deputy PM and health minister Fearne welcomed the important cargo at Malta International Airport.

The 10,000 vaccine Pfizer shots were transported at a temperature of minus 70 degrees Celcius on a Cessna Citation XLS+ private jet. The vaccine carries a GPS and thermo-regulator.

Prime Minister Robert Abela and health minister Chris Fearne at MIA

“Today we can start looking at a return to normality,” Prime Minister Robert Abela said in a press conference at the Malta International Airport.

“We achieved this step as a united nation that worked towards one aim. I’m proud that this government used all the country’s resources to protect people’s lives and livelihoods. Our budgets proposed targeted measures that helped people, and saw the country’s businesses retain people’s jobs and property sales growing.”

The vaccine was kept at a temperature of minus-70 degrees Celcius

Abela said the Maltese government had managed to keep schools open after summer and its business community thriving. “We are returning to normality, in pole position,” he said, urging the entire general public to be vaccinated.

Deputy PM Chris Fearne said the arrival of the vaccine was a historic day for Malta, saying the country would be now “attacking” the virus after a full eight months on the defensive. Fearne took a moment’s silence to remember those who had lost their lives to the virus. In Malta, 203 people passed away due to complications from the COVID-19 infection.

Malta will be obtaining 600,000 vaccine shots from Pfizer. “We have managed to increase a previous amount of 500,000 by 100,000,” Fearne said, crediting the Central Procurement Supplies Unit for having clinched the greater amount and quick delivery.

The first weeks will see 2,000 vaccine shots administered per week, first healthcare frontliners and then elderly people in care institutions, with vulnerable and elderly people following. Public health superintendent Prof. Charmaine Gauci appealed to the public to get vaccinated, but to also expect a slight increase in cases of COVID-19 due to the availability of the vaccine.

Doctors will be administering some 20,000 vaccine shots every week after the initial roll-out. Malta is expected to achieve herd immunity by summer of 2021 with two-thirds of the population vaccinated.

A vaccine passport will be issued so that travelling can resume normally.

The European Medicines Agency pushed forward the authorisation of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech to 21 December. The agency said that it brought forward a special meeting to give the final go-ahead after the company passed on additional data requested by its experts.