The British call it “the village that will save the world”. It is from Puurs, a Belgian village half an hour from Brussels to Antwerp, that more than 1 billion vaccines will be delivered to covid-19, the first million to the United Kingdom, where they are already being administered.
Puurs, in the center of Belgium, halfway between the capital Brussels, the political center of the European Union, and the rich Antwerp, of diamonds and jewelery, is, at this moment, one of the most important towns for humanity.
It is from the Pfizer factory, founded on the outskirts of this village about 60 years ago, that 1350 million vaccines against the covid-19 will come out, 50 million in what remains of the odious 2020 and the remaining 1300 million in the first months of the hopeful 2021.
The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, which will start to be administered in the United Kingdom on Tuesday, is based on two North American pharmaceutical plants, one in Michigan, in the land of “Uncle Sam”, another in Belgian soil, in a well-known location for beers like Duvel.
Unsurprisingly, platoons of journalists flock to the village of 16,000 souls, to show the world one of the places where they are being manufactured as the first vaccines for Europe, which, within a few months, may allow life to return to the rails of Europe. normality suspended since the beginning of 2020.
“I am proud that Pfizer has decided to produce the vaccine here. The Puurs people too, ”acknowledged the mayor, the conservative Koen Van den Heuvel. “In such a difficult period for all of us, it helps to know that we are making a product that will be fundamental in the future”, he added, quoted by the Spanish newspaper “El País”.
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