Photos show vaccines arriving at hospitals across Europe, after regulators finally approved the Pfizer shot

• Saturday marked the day that the first vaccines for the coronavirus were rolled out across Europe.
• The European Medicines Agency approved a vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech on Monday, joining the US and UK in doing so.
• The EMA has taken much longer to approve the vaccine, and the European Commission and EU governments had pressured the EMA to work faster, Reuters reported.
• Countries have been allocated a maximum 10,000 doses each as part of the first shipment.

Europe has begun to receive its first doses of the coronavirus vaccine.

On Monday, the European Medicines Agency approved the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech, joining the US and UK in doing so, after an extended delay.

Doses of the vaccine were manufactured in Belgium and were shipped across the European Union on Friday night.

Out of the first batch, the EU's 27 member states are by and large limited to 10,000 doses each, The Associated Press reported.

"It's here, the good news at Christmas," Jens Spahn, the German Health Minister, said Saturday.

"At this moment, trucks are underway across Europe, across Germany and its regions, to deliver the first vaccine."

"This vaccine is the decisive key to end this pandemic," he said.

Here's what the moment looked like across Europe.

Hungary

Hungarian military personnel carry boxes of the Pfizer vaccine at the South-Pest Central Hospital in Budapest on December 26, 2020..      SZILARD KOSZTICSAK/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Italy

Italian police escort a van carrying doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to the Istituto Lazzaro Spallanzani hospital on December 26, 2020 in Rome.      Antonio Masiello/Getty Images

Germany

Joachim Herrmann, Minister of the Interior of Bavaria, (C) seen with newly arrived Pfizer vaccines on December 26, 2020.      Daniel Karmann/picture alliance via Getty Images

Belgium

Shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines arrive at University Hospital, Brussels, Belgium, on December 26, 2020.      Nicolas Maeterlinck - Pool#OM/Getty Images

France

Franck Huet, head of the hospital pharmacy division of Paris Hospitals, seen with boxes of the Pfizer vaccines in Paris on December 26, 202.      STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Spain

The first doses of the Pfizer vaccine arrive on on December 26, 2020 in Guadalajara, Spain.      José María Cuadrado /Getty Images

Austria

A photo showing Austrian government officials holding the first doses of the vaccine in Vienna on December 26, 2020.      HANS PUNZ/APA/AFP via Getty Images