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Mass vaccination against coronavirus could be only ‘three months away’ according to government sources who believe everyone could take a hit on Easter
- All adults in Britain could get vaccinated against Covid-19 as soon as Easter
- Scientists say it could take up to a year for a vaccine to reach all adults in the UK.
- Government sources have revealed plans for mass vaccinations in six months.
Vaccination against the coronavirus could be only ‘three months away’ in Britain, government sources have revealed.
Every adult in the country could be vaccinated against Covid-19 as early as Easter, as plans are put in place to train an army of caregivers to administer the jab.
But scientists are skeptical, saying it could be much longer before full vaccination can be carried out, The Times reported.
Earlier this week, a Royal Society report warned that there would be significant challenges in the distribution and production of the vaccine on such a massive scale.
Nilay Shah, head of the department of chemical engineering at Imperial College London and co-author of the report, said: “Even when the vaccine is available, it doesn’t mean that within a month everyone will be vaccinated.
Every adult in the country could be vaccinated against Covid-19 as early as Easter, as plans are put in place to train an army of care workers to administer the jab (file image)
We are talking about six months, nine months. . . one year. It’s not about life suddenly returning to normal in March.
The University of Oxford has been conducting human trials with a vaccine since April and there is hope that regulators could approve it by Christman.
Government sources involved in the long-awaited vaccine said it would be less than six months before a full program, excluding children, was ready.
Plans to speed up the process include the creation of vaccination centers and rules that allow more personnel to strike.
The armed forces could even be recruited for additional help.
“We are looking closer to six months and it is likely to be much shorter than that,” said a government source.
Giving two doses of a vaccine to 53 million adults in a six-month period would involve 600,000 injections a day.
Those who most need the injections are at the top of the list, meaning that residents and residence staff will receive it as soon as it is ready.
Those over 80 and NHS staff are next, followed by those over 65, the youngest adults most at risk, and people over 50.
Some nursing home administrators were asked for a list of eligible frontline staff last month.
The government has already ordered around 100 million doses of the Oxford vaccine, which has yet to be successful.
Scientists are expected to know if it prevents at least 50 percent of infections, the threshold of success, by the end of this year.
Britain is currently subject to the European Medicines Agency until January, which means that it cannot administer the medicine even if it is approved by UK regulators.
But ministers have revealed plans to change the law to allow vaccines to start earlier.
The Health Department said: “We are confident that we have the proper provision or transportation, the PPE and the logistical expertise to implement a Covid-19 vaccine across the country as quickly as possible.”
People enter London’s Oxford Circus tube station after the 10pm curfew that pubs and restaurants are subjected to to combat the rise in coronavirus cases in England
It comes after it was revealed that the New York-based company Codagenix plans to begin trials of its vaccine in London later this year.
The jab will be of a type called a live attenuated vaccine, which means that people will receive a genetically modified version of the coronavirus that is weaker than the real one but still infectious.
Live attenuated vaccines, like the MMR vaccine, work by stimulating the immune system in the same way that true Covid-19 would, but relying on viruses that cannot cause serious illness.
Codagenix says its vaccine was successful after a single dose in animal trials and is designed to produce immunity against various parts of the coronavirus, rather than just the ‘spike protein’ on the outside that many others have focused on.
This could mean that it would still work even if the virus mutated. Using a live virus can allow doctors to create a type of immunity similar to what the body would naturally produce.
