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Top US epidemiologist Anthony Fauci had harsh words for the UK, accusing the country of speeding up the approval process for the novel coronavirus vaccine.
“With all due respect to many of my friends in the UK, but they missed the marathon and slipped the last mile,” the epidemiologist told CBS News on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the American retracted these criticisms in statements to the BBC: “I am very confident in what the UK is doing, both scientifically and from the point of view of regulators,” he said, adding that the US process “takes longer than in the UK. ” “I didn’t mean to imply any oversight,” he corrected himself.
The first
This week, the UK became the first Western country to approve the use of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine against covid-19.
This news comes days after the pharmaceutical company made the emergency request for approval of the commercialization of the vaccine.
On Wednesday, after a “rigorous analysis”, the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) agreed that the vaccine could be used from next week, while the analysis continues to see if its overall efficacy is 95% and if, for example, it also offers significant protection for the elderly.
“Help is on the way,” British Health Minister Matt Hancock promised the BBC, while Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged citizens not to “get carried away by optimism or the naive belief that it’s over. The struggle “.
Equitable distribution
According to the British Government, “the vaccine will be available throughout the United Kingdom from next week” and the first doses will be administered to priority groups, which include elements of the National Health Service, the elderly, home caregivers and clinically vulnerable patients.
The pharmaceutical company Pfizer wanted to reinforce that there will be no possibility that the richest people “can get ahead” of these priority groups to get vaccinated.
“I can say clearly and confidently that there are no plans to supply the private sector in the foreseeable future, under any circumstances,” Ben Osborn, UK manager at Pfizer, told the Financial Times. “Equity is at the center of the decision to supply only the British National Health System,” he added.
The UK has bought 40 million doses of the vaccine, which will allow 20 million people to be vaccinated, as two doses are needed per person. A good quantity of vaccines has yet to be acquired to inoculate the country’s 66.6 million inhabitants and it is estimated that by the end of the year only a quarter of the vaccines already purchased from Pfizer will arrive.
However, the AstraZeneca vaccine and the University of Oxford may have already been approved, which has the great advantages of being cheaper than Pfizer’s, not needing to be at temperatures of -70 ° C, and being much less fragile.
The British government does not want distribution to be done only in hospitals. The vaccines will be distributed in mass vaccination centers, installed in soccer stadiums, horse racing tracks and conference centers across the country, but also in general practitioners’ offices and even pharmacies.
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