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Thousands of hospital employees will join the campaign to vaccinate all adults in England against the coronavirus and will be deployed to mass vaccination centers to vaccinate up to 5,000 people a day, said NHS officials involved in the plans.
The NHS intends to use football stadiums, town halls and conference centers in England to vaccinate at least 2,000 people every day.
The new facilities will be in addition to the 1,560 community vaccination centers run by GPs, who will dispense 200 to 500 injections a day. All places will make temperature controls to people before entry and will allow a space for social distancing and a recovery time of 15 minutes.
However, the transfer of staff from hospitals that are already understaffed to help launch the vaccine could mean that patients have to wait longer for care. The NHS is already facing a huge backlog of cases due to its decision to suspend most of the provision of non-Covid care in the spring.
NHS England has asked the heads of England’s health services to be prepared to vaccinate many people at large sites that are not used due to the pandemic.
The details emerged when government figures showed that the number of deaths from Covid-19 in the UK has exceeded 50,000, adding to the pressure to implement a comprehensive vaccination program as soon as possible.
The centers are also expected to play a key role in immunizing the general public in a second phase of the vaccination program, following the dispensing of two doses each to the estimated 22 million, including nursing home residents, NHS staff and everyone 50 and over. more, considered a priority.
A Whitehall official explained the key role of the centers, saying: “We seek to vaccinate as many people as humanly possible as quickly as possible. We want the country to return to normality as soon as possible, which would allow us to open the economy ”.
Personnel from all hospitals will be assigned to the vaccination campaign, which the ministers consider vital to achieve their goal of reviving the economy and normalizing life.
However, staff could be absent from their normal duties for several months, which could affect hospital services. But many NHS workers are believed to be willing to help fight the virus.
Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, said on Wednesday that he would happily give his time off to help administer the vaccine. “This is one of the most important vaccination programs, if not the most important, that we have run for decades,” he said. “If I can help with this some nights and weekends by doing some extra vaccination sessions, then I will.”
District nurses, health visitors, and other health professionals who do not work in hospitals will also be recruited to help, amid concerns that while GPs are playing the lead role in the immunization effort, there are too few of them to meet the NHS target. to vaccinate a million people a week.
Vaccinators, which will include podiatrists and physical therapists, will also tour areas in vans or buses and visit staff “pop-up” immunization clinics to administer injections. They will also offer the vaccine to people gathered for religious services.
NHS England, which is running the immunization campaign, is finalizing the details of its plan to distribute the vaccines that become available and intends to publish it next week.
Although reports have said the rollout will begin on December 1, Whitehall and NHS sources said that was premature and that it was “very unlikely” that supplies of the Pfizer vaccine, or the one being developed by the University of California, would be available. Oxford and Astra Zeneca. until early 2021.
Ruth Rankine, Director of the NHS Confederation Primary Care Network, said that while family doctors and their staff would play the leading role in vaccination, especially in the first phase, other types of health professionals would contribute to than the NHS England “every day for the bomb approach”, in which tens of thousands of employees eventually participate.
The plans emerge when it emerged that the UK government had spent £ 50 million to reserve manufacturing capacity at a plant in Wales to ensure the supply of a second Covid-19 candidate vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and Astra Zeneca.
The government has also secured a £ 50 million manufacturing facility at a pharmaceutical company in North Wales for millions of doses of the Oxford vaccine and other candidates currently on trial. According to a notification to the EU, the contract with CP Pharmaceuticals, in Wrexham, involves an 18-month facility “to provide vaccines in bulk product form that will be converted into individual doses capable of being implemented through a mass vaccination program.”
CP Pharmaceuticals, which markets itself as Wockhardt, is already a large supplier of generic drugs to the NHS and has been testing the Oxford / Astra Zeneca AZD122 candidate vaccine in anticipation of that vaccine gaining regulatory approval.
However, a spokesperson said the facility could be involved in the production of multiple vaccines if required by the government.
Ravi Limaye, Managing Director Wockhardt, UK, said: “We have a sophisticated sterile manufacturing facility and a highly skilled workforce. We hope to begin administering the first doses of the vaccine later this year. ”
The government has also asked the owners of specialized healthcare stores to tender for the distribution of a Covid-19 vaccine. Those contacted have been forced to sign nondisclosure agreements, but this is believed to be related to the opening of supply channels for Pfizer vaccine in the existing national network of approximately 50 centers, which supply the NHS and pharmacies twice. up to date.
Martin Sawer, executive director of the Healthcare Distribution Association, said the association members were working closely with the government “to understand how the existing strong and efficient pharmaceutical distribution network can be used to help with the rapid deployment of the vaccine. Pfizer-BioNTech once regulatory approval is received. “
Pfizer will manufacture the drug at its plant in Puurs, Belgium, with a secure cold supply chain that will allow delivery to 1,500 vaccination centers in England.
The logistics involves high-tech cold boxes specially designed to store 1,000 vials each at temperatures of -75 ° C ± 15 ° C for up to 10 days.
Each of the shippers will be loaded with heat sensors that will send the temperature readings via GPS to a Pfizer monitoring center to ensure that the effectiveness of the drug is not compromised while in transit.
After arriving in the UK, the vials need to be distributed to vaccination clinics, where they can be stored at 2-8 ° C for up to five days.
Pfizer said it was confident that the supply chain would not be disrupted by Brexit border checkpoints, as the company had secured priority routes under contingency plans put in place for a no-deal Brexit in the UK.
“We have a strong plan in place regarding the supply of the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid-19 research candidate vaccine should it receive UK approval, in the event that no agreement is reached. We are confident in our ability to administer doses to government designated facilities, in accordance with product requirements. “
Last month, the government signed £ 87 million ferry contracts to secure the cargo capacity of medical supplies on nine routes serving the English ports of Felixstowe, Harwich, Hull, Newhaven, Poole, Portsmouth, Teesport and Tilbury, who described themselves as “in areas less likely to experience disruptions.”
