[ad_1]
LSPACE OTS and vinyl floors – that’s what local public health directors want. “The last time you walked into a NHS appointment … the floor would have been some kind of splash-proof vinyl in case you bleed or vomit, “says one. It’s the kind of flooring a mass vaccination center requires.
The search for suitable places has just become more urgent. On November 23, the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine team announced positive results (although there are some concerns about the data – see article). An inexpensive, transportable vaccine would be good news for the world. It would also be good news for Britain, and not just because it would be the product of a British university and an Anglo-Swedish company.
The government has ordered 40 million doses of the vaccine from Pfizer and 5 million from Moderna, the other two companies have announced the results of phase three of the trial. Both require two doses per person. He ordered 100m from AstraZeneca, which could only take one and a half. If all were approved, the AstraZeneca vaccine would thus accelerate the country’s journey towards herd immunity.
That approval is in the hands of the UK medicines regulator, the MHRA, which is looking at data from all three companies. AstraZeneca had planned to have 30 million doses ready by September; failed to do so, but tens of millions are expected to be ready when approval is granted. An insider says the hope is to deliver 5 million shots per week by mid-January.
The Joint Vaccination and Immunization Committee, which advises the government, has made a list of priorities, with residents and nursing home workers at the top, followed by 80+ and health care workers. The MHRA it will likely initially offer a permit for emergency use, which could limit vaccination to those most at risk until further evidence is available.
The British state’s lackluster response to the covid-19 pandemic provides many reasons for trepidation for the launch. But unlike the test or track-and-trace program, the NHS will manage things, eliminating the need to create a local leadership structure and organization from scratch.
It is not a completely new exercise for the health service. Britain has nearly 15 million flu shots a year. The need to store Pfizer vaccine at -70 ° C limits the role of general practitioners (GPs) carrying much of the flu campaign, as few surgeries have sufficiently frozen freezers. But the AstraZeneca vaccine can be stored at 8 ° C.
About half of the vaccines will be delivered in the community, the other half in mass vaccination centers. They will pop up in places like hospitals, sports halls and universities. Paramedics, physiotherapists and medical students will be called upon to provide them with staff. The same goes for veterinarians, dentists, and trained volunteers, for whom the government has changed the regulation on medicines for human use to allow them to administer shots.
All this is a great demand for the NHS at a time of year when it is normally more elongated. The expansion of this year’s influenza vaccine campaign suffered from distribution problems. GPI’m in discussion with NHS leadership on which parts of their work can be suspended to allow them to focus on vaccination. “We would like to protect patient services,” says Steve Mowle of the Royal College of General Practitioners.
Perhaps the biggest challenge will be the IT system. He will have to contact people at the right time for the first and second shots and to integrate the information with medical records. This is important, says Penny Ward of the School of Pharmaceutical Medicine, a professional body, so that analysts can sift through the records for unidentified side effects. Not everyone is optimistic. A scientist advising the government says he hasn’t been able to think of anything since the beginning of the pandemic “where we relied on digital media and it happened in a timely manner.”
In a program of this magnitude, things will almost certainly go wrong. But if that’s okay enough, there’s a glittering prize on offer. By spring, vaccination and increased testing “should reduce the need for economic and social restraints,” in the words of Boris Johnson. “We should be able to make the very idea of a covid-19 block obsolete.” ■
Editor’s Note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub
This article appeared in the British section of the print edition under the title “Emergency Exit”
Source link
