Key points:
- Overall, Britain requested 40 million shots – enough to vaccinate 20 million of the country’s 67 million inhabitants.
- Within the first week, approximately 800,000 doses are anticipated to be available.
- There are onerous storage criteria for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
- On Saturday in Moscow, Russia started distributing its Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine across 70 clinics.
Britain is planning to become the first nation this week to carry out the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, initially making the shot accessible at hospitals before supplying inventories to clinics for physicians, the government said that on Sunday.
The first dose on Tuesday:
The first doses are expected to be given on Tuesday, with top priority given by the National Health Service (NHS) to vaccinate the over-80s, frontline healthcare employees, and home care staff and residents.
Britain gives emergency use approval:
Britain approved the vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech last week for emergency use – moving ahead in the global race to launch the most important program of mass inoculation in history.
Overall, Britain requested 40 million shots – enough to vaccinate 20 million of the country’s 67 million inhabitants.
As the health Ministry stated:
Within the first week, approximately 800,000 doses are anticipated to be available. The health ministry said that initial doses that have reached from Belgium are stored in secure locations throughout the country, in which they will be quality tested.
There are onerous storage criteria for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. It needs to be stored in a normal refrigerator at -70C (-94F) as well as only lasts five days.
The Ministry of Health stated the vaccine would first be distributed in 50 hospitals for this purpose. It said that defrosting each vaccine and preparing it for use would take a couple of hours.
NHS England has written to general practitioners, asking them to get ready from Dec. 14 to begin providing vaccines through the services of local doctors.
Instead of operating clinics in individual surgeries, over 1,000 vaccination centres throughout the country will be managed by groups of local doctors, the government stated.
A senior medical official stated:
There are five packs of 975 doses in the boxes of the vaccine, but special regulatory permission is required to separate them.
A senior medical officer said that while he was confident the packs could be divided and distributed directly to care homes, it was not guaranteed.
Britain first country to roll out vaccine:
Outside the background of a clinical trial, Britain is among the first nations to carry out vaccines, raising expectations that the tide will soon turn toward a virus that killed almost 1.5 million people worldwide and hammered the world economy.
On Saturday in Moscow, Russia started distributing its Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine across 70 clinics, whereas the shot has not finished its final tests.
