The rollout of vaccines gives the UK a rare victory in the fight against pandemic

Because the vaccine could be refrigerated for only three days after arriving at the clinic, health workers knew they had to inject 400 doses per day on Saturday to use up supplies. There was already a line of people waiting for ‘jabs’, so doctors quickly diluted the vaccine, put the vials on trays, and hand them out to a team of assistants.

This is the front line in what has become the most ambitious peacetime mass mobilization in modern British history. Britain has set up dozens of vaccination centers in sports stadiums, churches, mosques and even an open-air museum in the Midlands, known to television viewers, as the setting for the hit crime series ‘Peaky Blinders’.

With nearly 8 million people, or 11.7% of the population, already having their first chance, the rate of vaccination in Britain is the fastest of any major country in the world. Only Israel and the United Arab Emirates are faster.

The rapid rollout is a rare success for a country whose response to the coronavirus was otherwise ruined – plagued by delays, reversals and mixed messages. All of which have contributed to a death toll that recently exceeded 100,000 and cemented Britain’s status as the most affected country in Europe.

The success has caused its own headaches: doctors are now worried about a shortage of supplies after a vaccine war broke out between Britain and the European Union. The EU imposed export restrictions on vaccines made in the bloc on Friday after accusing a UK-based vaccine maker, AstraZeneca, of favoring its home market.

And Britain’s aggressive approach is not without its risks: To reach more people quickly, it chose to delay the second dose until 12 weeks after the first dose, rather than the three or four weeks seen in clinical trials were tested.

However, the Bloomsbury clinic had a distinctly British atmosphere to deal with. The mostly elderly patients waited patiently in line, rolled up their sleeves for their pricks, and then retired to a gazebo outside for 15 minutes to be checked for possible reactions.

“So many of my friends have had it,” Emerenciana Mora, 72, a retired operator, said of the vaccine as she watched a physician assistant, Nasra Yusuf, prepare the needle. “Even the queen has had it.”

The divergence between Britain and its European neighbors has prompted some to claim an early Brexit windfall. The separation of Britain and the European Union gave it the political leeway to approve multiple vaccines ahead of the bloc and to quickly block its own production of the vaccine from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.

France, on the other hand, vaccinated only 1.8% of its population and Germany 2.6%, according to figures collected by Our World in Data. That reflects a supply shortage that has grown across the continent, as well as the slow pace of European Union regulators in approving vaccines.

But Britain’s success is also the result of back-to-basics decisions made by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government.

Rather than outsourcing the campaign to private companies or rebuilding it from scratch, as it did with the expensive, ineffective contact-tracking operation, the government has handed vaccination into the hands of the National Health Service, which continues to be common despite financial strains revered by the British public.

In addition to state hospitals, doctors are at the forefront of the program. Not only does that put trusted local doctors, who have experience with seasonal flu vaccinations, in the lead, but it has also allowed these doctors to target precisely the people in the government’s highest priority groups.

This is in stark contrast to the more fragmented approach in the United States. While Americans had to rush to book appointments on picky online portals and overwhelmed telephone helplines, British hospitals and doctors have set the schedule themselves, allowing them to start with their oldest and most vulnerable patients.

And while US states use complicated rules to dictate who is eligible for vaccines – which has helped slow rollout in some places – Britain has a clear system for prioritizing those most at risk because of their age. walk to die of the virus. , along with the nursing home workers and health professionals who treat them.

“We work through these priority groups without deviating absolutely,” said Dr. Daniel Beck, a primary care physician and the head of a federation of physicians who was busy preparing vials at the clinic. “Everyone benefits, whether they are someone who has left home without education or whether they are a gentleman.”

Among the 6,000 people vaccinated at the Bloomsbury clinic since mid-December was Joan Collins, 87, the British actress known for her role in “Dynasty.” But Beck said his main priority was to reduce hesitation about vaccines among racial and ethnic minorities, who polls have shown are more suspicious than whites from the health authorities who support the vaccine.

Abdul Mathlib, 85, a retired catering worker who had just received his injection, said he was concerned about the vaccine causing side effects even years later. But Mathlib said it was a risk worth taking, adding, “You have to take it, right?”

While some observers point to Britain’s greater risk tolerance than the European Union, they attribute more of the vaccination success to the country’s strong scientific basis, as well as to its “good old-fashioned preparation,” said David Goodhart, a writer whose latest book, “The Road to Somewhere” explores Britain from the Brexit era.

In any case, it was not typical of Britain’s broader response.

Few foreign leaders have struggled with the pandemic like Johnson. He stopped tracing contacts on a large scale and opposed the imposition of a lockdown, after which he ended up in intensive care himself after contracting the virus.

But during those chaotic early days, his ministers started investing in vaccines and signed early contracts with manufacturers. They also recruited Kate Bingham, a British venture capitalist, to lead a government vaccine task force.

In March, the government provided initial funding – £ 2.6 million, or $ 3.5 million – to the Oxford research team. In May, while the vaccine was still in clinical trials, Britain reached a deal with AstraZeneca to purchase tens of millions of doses, three months before the European Union negotiated the purchases.

With concerns about vaccine protectionism already flaring up, British officials were determined to make any homegrown vaccine quickly and easily accessible to British. They spoke to the Oxford team as it negotiated with Merck and other pharmaceutical companies to find a partner to mass produce and distribute the vaccine.

Oxford eventually struck a deal with AstraZeneca, which is headquartered in Cambridge.

“They made it quite clear to me and others that they wanted to know more about the deal, and they were concerned about vaccination nationalism,” said John Bell, an Oxford professor and member of the government’s vaccine task force, last year. referring to British Health Officials.

Two factories in England are now manufacturing the vaccine and a firm in Wales is preparing it for distribution. The UK government has said that the majority of its shipments of AstraZeneca vaccines come from that supply chain.

AstraZeneca has said its early agreement with Great Britain helped solve the inevitable manufacturing problems before it started distributing the vaccine. Production problems at a Belgian factory prompted the company to announce that it would reduce its deliveries to Europe by 60%, which led to the dispute over the channels.

“With the UK, we have had an extra three months to resolve all the problems we encountered,” Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s CEO, told an Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, this week.

On Friday, EU drug regulators approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for all adults, sticking to the precedent set by the UK regulator last month.

Meanwhile, Britain may soon be getting another vaccine.

Novavax, a biotechnology company based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, reported Friday that its vaccine was found to be 89.3% effective in a large-scale study in Britain. The government has secured 60 million doses, which will be made at a factory in the North East of England. If UK regulators approve, the vaccine will be delivered in the second half of 2021.

All told, the UK government has spent at least £ 11.7 billion, or $ 16 billion, on developing, manufacturing, purchasing and administering vaccines.

“Vaccination is the only thing we’ve done right,” said Christina Pagel, professor of operations research at University College London.

That does not mean that the rollout went without tension. With hospitals flooded and a more contagious variant raging across the country, Britain has bet to give more people the partial protection of a single dose, rather than quickly giving fewer people the full protection of two doses.

Doctors whose booster shots have been delayed were upset about the approach, accusing the government of making them the subject of a risky new experiment that they worry vaccines will make less effective. Immunologists have expressed concern that a country full of people with only partial immunity could produce vaccine-resistant mutations, while Pfizer said the strategy is not supported by the data collected in clinical trials.

But the idea of ​​prioritizing first shots has gained some traction as countries grappling with the rising virus and shortages in vaccine supplies are looking for ways to get partial protection for their populations.

For the tormented doctors at Bloomsbury Clinic, the biggest challenge is simply getting a steady supply of doses.

“Our main problem is that from week to week we don’t know what deliveries we are getting,” said Dr. Ammara Hughes, the clinical director, as she anxiously scanned her iPhone for news of the next delivery. “The logistics are difficult.”

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