German Pilot Traces Syringe in the Sky to Mark Vaccine Campaign

A young German pilot said Sunday he traced a giant syringe in the sky as a way of marking the start of Germany’s rollout of vaccines against the coronavirus.

Samy Kramer, a 20-year-old amateur pilot, had carefully plotted out the route he needed to take in advance in order to create the effect in the skies above Baden-Wuerttemberg.

The manoeuvres included a number of 90-degree turns during the flight on Wednesday that lasted one hour and 40 minutes and covered around 280 kilometres.

“There are still relatively many people opposing the vaccination and my action may be a reminder for them to think about the topic, to get things moving”, Kramer told Reuters TV on Sunday, adding that his flight should not be understood as a direct call to be inoculated.

“Perhaps it was also a bit of a sign of joy, because the aviation industry has been hit pretty hard by the pandemic,” he said.

The syringe-shaped route showed up on the internet site flightradar24.

The European Union kicked off its COVID-19 vaccination campaign on Sunday.

The 27-nation bloc staged a coordinated rollout aimed at projecting a unified message that the shot was safe and Europe’s best chance to emerge from the pandemic.

The European Commission says it has secured contracts for more than 2 billion vaccine doses from an array of drug makers.