Vaccines can reduce the UK epidemic in weeks

LONDON – Britain is on track to give the first injection of a two-dose coronavirus vaccine to its entire population by the end of June, if it can avoid supply and logistics problems that threaten to slow one of the fastest implementations of the world.

The most vulnerable will receive their first doses much earlier – probably in the next two weeks – which can dramatically reduce deaths. People over 70, residents and nursing home workers, social and health workers and those whose health problems make them extremely vulnerable are all on schedule to receive their first vaccines before February 15. Together, these groups represent 88 percent of all deaths by covid19.

The timeline shows the promise of vaccination as a way out of the deadliest stage of the pandemic in countries that are moving fast. The first data from Israel show a significant drop in infection after just one injection, and a recent analysis suggested that the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine not only provides good protection against disease and death, but also has the potential to reduce transmission of the virus. Scientists said the results are promising, but have yet to be confirmed.

On Wednesday, the UK vaccinated more than 15 percent of its population, more than anywhere in the world except Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The United States was over 8% and the European Union below 3%.

Of course, the launch of vaccines in Britain should not follow a perfectly straight line. A vaccine war with the European Union could jeopardize the supply of vaccines, and the country’s decision to administer more first doses while delaying the doses of the second injection could create an accumulation of patients. (The first dose of a vaccine offers variable protection, somewhere around 50 percent, which can reach 95 percent after the second injection.)

“The first jab is the easiest to make, the second is the most difficult,” said Kit Yates, a mathematical biologist at the University of Bath. “When we get back to the second shots, we have to do this in the right order, and that is part of the bureaucracy that can slow things down.”

If the current rate of vaccination in Britain were to drop by 20%, it would take until the end of July to vaccinate everyone.

So far, the rapid launch of vaccines in the country has been considered a success. Britain moved faster than any western nation to authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in early December and the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine in late December, and began vaccinating health workers and the elderly on December 8. In the past two weeks, the country has administered an average of 394,000 doses per day.

The pace of vaccinations was also helped by carrying out the campaign through the highly centralized National Health Service, which covers all Britons and provides most of the country’s healthcare. And in addition to Britain’s relatively rapid vaccine approval process, the country has acted more aggressively than the European Union, ordering large quantities of vaccines several months before they were approved.

“It’s a betting hedge strategy,” said Yates. “We bought large doses of vaccines in case some of them don’t work.”

The British government has already ordered 407 million doses from seven manufacturers – about six per person in the country – although only three of the vaccines are currently approved for use. Some of the businesses will have vaccines delivered in the second half of 2021 or even next year.

It was only last week that the country surpassed the bleak 100,000 deaths of Covid-19, by far the highest number of deaths in Europe. But the success of the vaccine’s implementation so far gives hope that Britain’s most vulnerable are being protected and that the number of Covid-related deaths will drop significantly in the coming weeks.