UK launches AstraZeneca vaccine and hails leadership in the fight against coronavirus

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain began vaccinating its population with the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca on Monday, announcing a scientific “triumph” that puts it at the forefront of the West in inoculation against the virus .

Britain, which is running to vaccinate its population faster than the United States and the rest of Europe, is the first country to launch the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, although Russia and China have been vaccinating their citizens for months.

Just under a month since Great Britain became the first country in the world to launch the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech in Germany, dialysis patient Brian Pinker, 82, was the first to get the Oxford vaccine / AstraZeneca at 0730 GMT.

“I am delighted to receive the COVID vaccine today and very proud that it was invented in Oxford,” said Pinker, a retired maintenance manager who is on dialysis for kidney disease, just a few hundred meters from where the vaccine was developed.

Pinker was looking forward to celebrating his 48th wedding anniversary with his wife Shirley in February.

“Today’s nurses, doctors and staff have been brilliant,” he said.

Britain, battling the sixth worst death toll in the world and one of the worst economic blows of the COVID crisis, has already put more than a million COVID-19 vaccines into arms – more than the rest of Europe combined, said the 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 has become the first western country to approve and launch a COVID-19 vaccine, betting that advancing a vaccine will allow it to get out of the COVID crisis sooner than other countries, offering Johnson a rare opportunity to shine.

Other Western countries have taken a longer and more cautious approach to launching vaccines, 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, developed by the Gamaleya Institute, 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.

A dose of caution was introduced by ITV political editor Robert Peston, who said that scientists are not entirely confident that COVID-19 vaccines will work on a new variant of the coronavirus found in South Africa.

COVID CRISIS

More than 75,000 people in the UK died of COVID, although a broader measure puts the death toll at 82,624 and cases are increasing dramatically, fueled by a separate variant of the virus.

Johnson said on Sunday that tougher restrictions are likely to be introduced, even with millions of citizens already living under the strictest rules.

England is currently divided into four different levels of restrictions, 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.”

The spread of the variant virus also forced the government to change its approach to vaccination. Britain is now prioritizing giving a first dose of a vaccine to as many people as possible instead of giving second doses. Delaying the distribution of the second shots should help to stretch the stock.

Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford Vaccine Group and chief investigator of the injection test, also received the vaccine.

“This is a very critical moment. We are about to be affected by this disease, ”he told BBC TV. “I think it gives us a little hope, but I think we have some difficult weeks ahead of us.”