LONDON (Reuters) – Britain has started vaccinating its population with the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca’s COVID-19, fired on Monday at an unprecedented place in the world, rushing to protect the elderly and vulnerable while a new outbreak of cases threatened to overwhelm hospitals.
Britain has proclaimed a scientific “triumph” that puts it at the forefront of the West, as 82-year-old dialysis patient Brian Pinker became the first person to take Oxford / AstraZeneca out of a trial.
While the big powers are aiming for the benefits of being the first out of the pandemic, Britain is rushing to vaccinate its population faster than the United States and the rest of Europe, although Russia and China have been vaccinating their citizens for the past few years. months.
Just under a month since Britain became the first country in the world to launch the vaccine developed by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, Pinker, who has kidney disease, received the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine.
“I am delighted to receive the COVID vaccine today and very proud that it was invented in Oxford,” said Pinker, a retired maintenance manager, just a few hundred meters from where the vaccine was developed.
Pinker said he was looking forward to celebrating his 48th wedding anniversary with his wife Shirley in February.
Britain, struggling with the sixth worst death toll in the world and one of the worst economic blows of the COVID crisis, has seen a resurgence of cases for new daily highs.
This placed renewed urgency in the implementation plans. Britain is prioritizing giving the first dose of a vaccine to as many people as possible instead of giving the second doses, although some doctors and scientists express concern.
Early on, we saw that the vaccine was the only long-term solution.
–Matt Hancock, UK Secretary of Health
Since the launch of the Pfizer vaccine began on December 8, Britain has put more than a million COVID-19 vaccines into arms – more than the rest of Europe combined, said Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
“It is a triumph of British science that we have managed to get where we are,” Hancock told Sky. “Early on, we saw that the vaccine was the only way out in the long run.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has guaranteed 100 million doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, which can be stored in refrigerator temperatures between two and eight degrees, making it easier to distribute than the Pfizer vaccine.
Six hospitals in England are administering the first of about 530,000 doses that Britain has prepared. The program will be expanded to hundreds of other British locations in the coming days, and the government expects it to deliver tens of millions of doses in a few months.
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they administered 4.2 million first doses of COVID-19 vaccines on Saturday morning and distributed 13.07 million doses.
But Israel is the world leader: more than a tenth of its population has received a vaccine and Israel is now administering more than 150,000 doses a day.
Vaccine race
Britain became the first western country to approve and launch a COVID-19 vaccine. Others have taken a longer and more cautious approach, although Russia and China have been inoculating their citizens for months with several different vaccines still in the final testing phase.
China on December 31 approved its first vaccine COVID-19 for general public use, an injection developed by an affiliate of state pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm. The company said it is 79% effective against the virus.
Russia said on November 24 that its Sputnik V vaccine was 91.4% effective based on provisional results from final stage tests. It started vaccination in August and has inoculated more than 100,000 people so far.
India approved the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine on Sunday for emergency use.
Two new variants of the coronavirus are complicating the response of COVID-19 and may force new national restrictions in England.
Scientists are not entirely confident that the COVID-19 vaccines will work on a variant found in South Africa, said ITV political editor Robert Peston.
The cases were also fueled by a highly transmissible variant from the UK and more than 75,000 people in the UK died of COVID in 28 days after a positive test.
Johnson said on Sunday that tougher restrictions are likely, even with millions already living under the strictest rules.
England is divided into four different levels, depending on the prevalence of the virus, and Hancock said the rules in some parts of the country at Level 3 were clearly not working.
Asked whether the government was considering imposing a new national blockade, Hancock said: “We have not ruled out anything.”
Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, also received the vaccine on Monday.
“We are on the verge of being overwhelmed by this disease,” he told BBC TV. “I think (the vaccine) gives us a little hope, but I think we have some difficult weeks ahead of us.”
(Written by William James, Guy Faulconbridge and Alistair Smout; Edited by Susan Fenton, Kate Holton, Raissa Kasolowsky and Nick Macfie)
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