LONDON – The coronavirus has been torn in nursing homes in the UK, just like in the US, and has claimed tens of thousands of lives. Now the UK is hoping to turn the tide, thanks to a homegrown vaccine that is not yet to be approved elsewhere in the West.
More than four million of the UK’s most at risk people, nearly 8% of the adult population, have been vaccinated with at least one injection.
Among them are more than half of the most vulnerable: the 300,000 elderly residents of nursing homes who cannot travel to receive an injection. The key to reaching them was mobile vaccination teams armed with an injection developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca PLC.
Together with a network of GPs and vaccination centers in sports centers, hotels and cathedrals, this inclusion has helped the country stay on track towards the goal of vaccinating the 15 million most vulnerable people by mid-February.
The government says the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has also been approved in India, Morocco and some countries in Latin America, has been a game changer in reaching people tucked away in smaller nursing homes.