Mass vaccination across the European Union – a bloc of 446 million people – began early on Sunday.
This comes after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Commission authorised the German-US Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
The EU has secured contracts for more than two billion vaccine doses from a range of drug companies.
EU leaders have negotiated contracts for more than 2 billion vaccine doses from various suppliers. The first 200 million doses are of the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech.
The EU hopes to vaccinate residents of all 27 member-states by the end of next year.