Covid-19 – Vaccine deployment in Britain is approaching a speed bump | Brittany

THEN 17 MARCH, 433,320 Britons received their first dose of covid-19 vaccine, nearly twice as many as the week before, bringing the total to more than 25 million, or nearly half of the UK’s adult population. This is the kind of news that the British are now used to.

With the pace of vaccination set to accelerate over the next fortnight, the government is rushing towards its goal of offering the first doses to all of the nine priority cohorts – a group of 32 million, which includes all over 50s. – by mid-April. This would be enough to prevent the vast majority of deaths. Yet in rare vaccine-related bad news, it emerged Britain could limp beyond the line.

On the day he reached the first doses of 25 m, the National Health Service (NHS) wrote to officials in England warning that supply would be “considerably limited” in the week starting March 29, and that things would be strained for a month. Vaccination centers have been told not to book people under 50 in April.

“We are now entering a world where second doses will chew up the progress we can make,” notes a scientist advising the government. Vaccination began on December 8, but it wasn’t until January that the rollout really began. As the maximum spread between doses is three months, an increase in supply would have been necessary to keep the first doses at the same rate in April.

This expected hurdle was accompanied by unforeseen supply problems. Britain has yet to receive doses of Moderna and has yet to approve Novavax or Johnson & Johnson vaccines, with their doses expected later in the year. According to a senior NHS The official plan was to use Pfizer primarily for second doses in April. The problem is, the health department will have fewer doses of AstraZeneca than expected, apparently due to a delayed shipment from the Indian Serum Institute.

The health department, now home to the procurement task force, insists it will nonetheless meet its goal of providing a vaccine to all UK adults by the end of July. Ministers will desperately want things not to slide any further, with the deployment being a rare triumph in Britain’s response to covid-19. This can provide comfort to people in their 40s who want a needle in their arm.

Dig deeper

All of our pandemic and vaccine related stories can be found on our coronavirus hub. You can also listen to The Jab, our new podcast on the race between injections and infections, and find trackers showing the global vaccine rollout, excess deaths by country, and the spread of the virus in Europe and America.

This article appeared in the Great Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Speed ​​bump”