By Jason Douglas and Stephen Fidler
LONDON -- Britain's authorization of a Covid-19 vaccine, the
first in the West, sets in motion an ambitious plan that will test
the capabilities of its state-run National Health Service:
Inoculate everybody in the country over 50 within months.
The U.K. has been laying the groundwork for some time. Officials
organized test runs to refine the logistics of delivering a shot
that, in the case of the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and
BioNTech SE, has to be stored at an ultralow temperature. The
government changed the law to allow student doctors,
physiotherapists and dental workers to administer the jab.
Scientists advising the government have drawn up a provisional list
of who should get vaccinated first.
The scale and urgency of the task is such that the NHS, already
under enormous pressure because of the pandemic, has appealed for
retired doctors and nurses to rejoin the service and for thousands
of volunteers to train as vaccinators and support staff.
The project will be "the biggest vaccination campaign in our
history," NHS Chief Executive Simon Stevens said Wednesday.
One major help: Vaccine skepticism is lower in the U.K. than in
many other Western countries. A survey by Ipsos in October showed
79% of Britons would get Covid-19 shots if available, compared with
64% in the U.S. and 54% in France.
Under a plan drawn up by medical experts, Britons have been
prioritized for vaccination in nine tiers based on their risks of
dying from Covid-19. First in line are staff and the more than
400,000 residents in nursing homes, followed by other health
workers and the estimated 3.4 million people over 80. People are
then be prioritized according to age in decreasing five-year
intervals, down to people aged 50 and over.
A logistical wrinkle that officials say they are rushing to iron
out: The vaccine comes in packs of almost 1,000 doses, and
regulators haven't yet given approval to split them up into smaller
lots that can be ferried to nursing homes. The very first
vaccinations next week will therefore cover over-80s and other
high-priority groups who can travel to 50 hospital hubs, Mr.
Stevens said, with nursing-home residents reached as soon as
possible thereafter.
Nobody under 50 is on the list, except for those classified as
clinically extremely vulnerable and who will be vaccinated along
with the over-70s, plus over-16s in at-risk groups, such as people
who are morbidly obese or have diabetes. These people are in line
to receive shots after the over-65s. Plans for vaccinating healthy
people aged under 50 will be announced later.
Nadhim Zahawi, the government minister in charge of vaccine
deployment, said Monday that the health service was "ready to go as
soon as the vaccine is approved."
Past emergency mass vaccination efforts, such as for smallpox in
the 1960s and swine flu in 2010, were delivered primarily by family
doctors at thousands of practices across the country.
Family doctors, known in the U.K. as general practitioners, will
again be pressed into service to administer Covid-19 vaccinations
to people in their care, including frail residents of nursing homes
and others too ill to travel. Doctors have been told to offer
vaccinations seven days a week, including on public holidays, and
to aim to administer at least 975 vaccinations a week.
The government has said regional vaccination centers capable of
storing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the required
minus-70-degree-Celsius temperature will be used to distribute the
shot where it is needed. (For up to five days, the shots can be
kept in temperatures between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius.) Hubs in
hospitals will give the jab to NHS workers and others from next
week.
The government has said it also plans to repurpose sports
centers and conference halls into mass vaccination centers.
Pharmacies, schools and municipal gyms and libraries may also be
used, according to the Royal College of General Practitioners,
which represents the U.K.'s family doctors and is advising them on
vaccination logistics. Maintaining social distancing, ensuring
adequate supplies of masks and other protective equipment, and
finding enough trained staff will be key challenges, the college
said in August.
St John Ambulance, a charity that provides first-aid services
and training, plans to train 30,500 volunteers to administer the
shots and support others in doing so between now and the spring.
Around one-third of the volunteers will be trained to give the
vaccination, with the remainder helping older and vulnerable people
access the inoculation and checking on people after the jab, said
Lynn Thomas, a hospital doctor and medical director of the
charity.
Sam Rogers, a 26-year-old nurse, said his volunteer work with St
John Ambulance usually involved treating falls and the occasional
cardiac arrest at sporting events, village fairs and air shows. He
will now be in charge of training as many as 400 volunteers to
administer the shot. His day job has put him on the front line of
the pandemic in a hospital emergency department in Dorset,
England.
"Hopefully now this vaccine will give us some positivity, some
light towards the end of the tunnel," he said.
The U.K. has ordered more than 350 million doses of seven
experimental Covid-19 vaccines. It has ordered 40 million doses of
the Pfizer and BioNTech jab authorized Wednesday, which is enough
to vaccinate 20 million people. Its biggest order, for 100 million
doses, is for the shot developed by AstraZeneca PLC and the
University of Oxford. The U.K.'s medicines regulator is reviewing
data on that vaccine, which officials hope could be available
before the end of the year if it gets the green light.
A Covid-19 shot could be administered much like the annual flu
vaccine is across the developed world. Doctors estimate it would
take just a few minutes longer than a normal flu vaccine to put
into people's arms. However, there will be a greater bureaucratic
burden because people will need to receive two shots of the same
vaccine, with a minimum of 21 to 28 days between each, and general
practitioners will need to be informed that the shots have been
administered.
Around 15 million people were vaccinated against influenza in
the U.K. last winter, according to the NHS. There are around 66
million people in the U.K., of whom 25 million are over 50 and nine
million are over 70.
By targeting those who are most vulnerable, the government is
hoping to reduce pressure on hospitals and diminish the need for
lockdowns and other restrictions. This, combined with better
treatments, more effective testing and a measure of immunity in the
community from those who have had the virus, could reduce the need
for social distancing.
Public-health experts estimate that between 60% and 70% of a
population would need to be vaccinated against Covid-19 for herd
immunity to effectively halt virus transmission and shield those
who can't be safely inoculated.
"We need people to take it. This vaccine isn't going to help you
if you don't take it," U.K. deputy chief medical officer Jonathan
Van-Tam said Wednesday, adding that a low uptake would mean
restrictions would have to last longer.
Write to Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com and Stephen
Fidler at stephen.fidler@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 03, 2020 08:14 ET (13:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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