UK first to deploy AstraZeneca fire in race to stem COVID outbreak

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain began vaccinating its population on Monday with COVID-19 from the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, a world first, running to protect the elderly and vulnerable as a new wave of cases threatened to overwhelm hospitals.

Britain has touted a scientific ‘triumph’ that puts it at the forefront of the West as dialysis patient Brian Pinker, 82, became the first person to be shot at Oxford / AstraZeneca in outside of a test.

As the major powers contemplate the benefits of being the first to emerge from the pandemic, Britain is rushing to vaccinate its population faster than the United States and the rest of Europe, although Russia and the China has been inoculating their citizens for months.

Just under a month since Britain became the first country in the world to roll out the vaccine developed by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, Pinker, who suffers from kidney disease, received the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine .

“I am so happy to receive the COVID vaccine today and really proud that it is the one that was invented in Oxford,” said Pinker, a retired maintenance manager, a few hundred yards from the location. where the vaccine was developed.

Pinker said he looks forward to celebrating his 48th wedding anniversary with his wife Shirley in February.

Britain, struggling with the sixth-worst global record and one of the worst economic success stories of the COVID crisis, has seen a resurgence of cases to new daily highs.

This reinforced the urgency of the deployment plans. Britain is prioritizing a first dose of the vaccine to as many people as possible rather than a second dose, despite concerns from some doctors and scientists.

Since the Pfizer vaccine rollout began on December 8, Britain has put more than one million COVID-19 vaccines into arms – more than the rest of Europe combined, the health secretary said , Matt Hancock.

“It’s a triumph of British science that we’ve managed to get to where we are,” Hancock told Sky. “From the start, we saw that the vaccine was the only long-term outcome.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has secured 100 million doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine which can be stored at refrigerator temperatures between two and eight degrees, making it easier to distribute than the Pfizer vaccine.

Six hospitals in England are administering the first of some 530,000 doses that Britain has loaned. The program will be rolled out to hundreds of other UK sites in the coming days, and the government hopes it will deliver tens of millions of doses within months.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it administered 4.2 million first doses of COVID-19 vaccine on Saturday morning and distributed 13.07 million doses.

But Israel is the world leader: more than a tenth of its population has received a vaccine and Israel now administers more than 150,000 doses per day.

VACCINE RUN

Britain became the first Western country to approve and deploy a COVID-19 vaccine. Others have taken a longer, more cautious approach, although Russia and China have been inoculating their citizens for months with several different vaccines still in late testing.

On December 31, China approved its first COVID-19 vaccine for the general public, a vaccine developed by a subsidiary of state-backed pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm. The company said it was 79% effective against the virus.

Russia said on Nov. 24 that its Sputnik V vaccine was 91.4 percent effective based on results from late-stage provisional trials. It started vaccinations in August and has so far vaccinated more than 100,000 people.

India approved the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use on Sunday.

Two new variants of the coronavirus complicate the response to COVID-19 and could impose new national restrictions in England.

Scientists are not entirely convinced the COVID-19 vaccines will work on a variant found in South Africa, ITV political editor Robert Peston said.

The cases have also been fueled by a highly transmissible UK variant and more than 75,000 people in the UK have died from COVID within 28 days of testing positive.

Johnson said on Sunday that tighter restrictions were likely, even with millions of people already living under the strictest level of rules.

England is split into four different tiers, based on the prevalence of the virus, and Hancock said rules in parts of the country from Tier 3 are clearly not working.

When asked if the government is considering imposing a new national lockdown, Hancock said, “We are not ruling anything out.”

Andrew Pollard, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, also received the vaccine on Monday.

“We are on the verge of being overwhelmed by this disease,” he told BBC TV. “I think (the vaccine) gives us some hope, but I think we have some tough weeks ahead.”