UK Gears Up For Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Launch This Week By Reuters

By Alistair Smout and Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain is preparing to become the first country to launch the Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine this week, initially making the injection available in hospitals before distributing stocks to doctors’ clinics. the government said Sunday.

The first doses will be administered on Tuesday, and the National Health Service (NHS) will give top priority to vaccinating those over 80, frontline healthcare workers and nursing home staff and residents.

Britain approved the emergency use of the vaccine developed by Pfizer (NYSE 🙂 and BioNTech last week, leaping ahead in the global race to start the most crucial mass inoculation program ever.

In all, Britain has ordered 40 million doses. Since each person requires two doses, that’s enough to vaccinate 20 million people in the country of 67 million.

About 800,000 doses are expected to be available during the first week.

The initial doses that have arrived from Belgium are stored in secure locations throughout the country, where their quality will be controlled, the Health Ministry said.

The launch coincides with a crucial and dangerous moment in the negotiations between Britain and the European Union on a post-Brexit trade deal.

A status quo transition period will end on December 31 and a no-deal scenario would lead to major disruptions in the movement of goods between Britain and EU countries like Belgium.

The Observer newspaper reported on Sunday that, under the UK government’s contingency plans, tens of millions of doses of vaccines could be shipped to Britain on military aircraft to avoid port delays caused by Brexit.

The government declined to comment on the Observer report. Agriculture and Environment Minister George Eustice asked on Sky News about concerns of the Brexit-related disruption and whether the Observer report was true, saying: “It will not affect the vaccine.”

“A great deal of work has been done to keep the flow of goods at the border in the event of a no-deal Brexit and we also have contingency plans, including a government-purchased ferry that is on hold and of course the option, if necessary, to use air transport as well. “

QUEEN TO GET JAB

The Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine has burdensome storage requirements. It should be kept at -70 ° C (-94 ° F) and only lasts for five days in a normal refrigerator.

For that reason, the Health Ministry said the vaccine would be administered first in 50 hospitals. He said it would take a few hours to thaw each vaccine and prepare it for use.

NHS England has written to general practitioners, telling them to prepare to start vaccinating through local medical services from 14 December.

Instead of running clinics in individual surgeries, groups of local doctors will operate more than 1,000 vaccination centers across the country, the government said.

The vaccine boxes contain five 975-dose packages, but special regulatory approval is required to divide them. A senior medical official has said that while he was hoping it would be possible to divide the packages and deliver them directly to nursing homes, it was not guaranteed.

Britain is among the first nations to implement vaccines outside the context of a clinical trial, raising hope that the tide may soon turn against a virus that has killed nearly 1.5 million people worldwide and has hit the world economy.

With high levels of skepticism about vaccines that concerned public health experts, the Times and Mail on Sunday newspapers reported that Queen Elizabeth, 94, and her husband, Prince Philip, 99, would “let it be known.” when they got the vaccine.

The queen is highly admired in British society, and her public endorsement of the vaccine would be a powerful message to counter the anti-vaccination misinformation circulating online.