The UK is launching the AstraZeneca vaccine and the fight against coronavirus is a leader

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain began vaccinating its population with the COVID-19 trait developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca on Monday, promoting a scientific “triumph” that puts it at the forefront of the West in inoculating against the virus.

Britain, which is quick to vaccinate its population faster than the United States and the rest of Europe, is the first country to launch the Oxford / AstraZeneca shot even though Russia and China have inoculated their citizens. for months.

Just under a month after Britain became the first country in the world to deploy the vaccine developed by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, 82-year-old dialysis patient Brian Pinker was the first to shoot. at Oxford / AstraZeneca at 07:30 GMT.

“I am very happy to receive the COVID vaccine today and I am very proud that it was the one that was invented in Oxford,” said Pinker, a retired maintenance manager who has been on dialysis for kidney disease, a few hundred meters away. ‘where the vaccine was developed.

Pinker was looking forward to celebrating his 48th wedding anniversary with his wife Shirley in February.

“The nurses, doctors and staff today have been brilliant,” he said.

Britain, facing the sixth worst death toll in the world and one of the worst economic successes of the COVID crisis, has armed more than a million vaccines against COVID-19, more than the rest of Europe, point out Health Secretary Matt Hancock. .

“This is a triumph of British science that we have managed to get where we are,” Hancock told Sky. “At first, we saw that the vaccine was the only long-term way out.”

The government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson has secured 100 million doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine that can be stored at refrigerator temperatures of between two and eight degrees, making it easier to distribute than the Pfizer shot.

Six hospitals in England administer the first of Britain’s 530,000 doses ready. The program will be expanded to hundreds of other British sites in the coming days and the government expects to deliver tens of millions of doses in a few months.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they administered 4.2 million first doses of COVID-19 vaccines as of Saturday morning and distributed 13.07 million doses.

But Israel is the world leader: more than a tenth of its population has been vaccinated and Israel now administers more than 150,000 doses a day.

VACCINE RACE

Britain became the first Western country to approve and deploy a vaccine against COVID-19, betting that moving forward with a vaccine will allow it to emerge from the COVID crisis sooner than other countries, giving Johnson a rare opportunity to shine.

Other Western countries have taken a longer and more cautious approach to deploying vaccines, although Russia and China have inoculated their citizens for months with several vaccines that are still undergoing final-stage trials.

On December 31, China approved its first COVID-19 vaccine for general public use, a feature developed by a subsidiary of the state-backed pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm. The company said it is 79% effective against the virus.

Russia said on November 24 that its Sputnik V vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya Institute, was 91.4% effective based on the provisional results of the final phase trials. He started vaccinations in August and has so far inoculated more than 100,000 people.

India on Sunday approved the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use.

ITV political editor Robert Peston introduced a dose of caution, saying scientists are not fully confident that COVID-19 vaccines will work on a new variant of the coronavirus found in South Africa.

COVID CRISIS

More than 75,000 people in the UK have died from COVID, although a wider measure puts the death toll at 82,624 and cases are rising sharply, fueled by a separate variant of the virus.

Johnson said Sunday that tougher restrictions are likely to be introduced, even with millions of citizens already living below the strictest level of rules.

Currently, England is divided into four different levels of restrictions, depending on the prevalence of the virus, and Hancock said the rules in some parts of the country at level 3 clearly did not work.

Asked if the government was thinking of imposing a new national closure, Hancock said, “We don’t rule anything out.”

The spread of the variant virus has also forced the government to change its approach to vaccination. Now Britain is prioritizing getting a first dose of vaccine to as many people as possible before giving two. Delaying the distribution of second dams should help stretch the supply.

Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford vaccine group and chief investigator of the shooting trial, also received the vaccine.

“This is a really critical moment. We are on the verge of being overwhelmed by this disease, “he told BBC TV. “I think it gives us some hope, but I think we have some tough weeks ahead.”