Seven massive coronavirus vaccination sites opened in England on Monday as the government rushed to dose millions as a new strain of the disease spread across the country.
Venues include football stadiums and a horse racing field and are located in cities such as Bristol, London, Newcastle and Manchester.
According to the National Health Service (NHS) of England, they will vaccinate thousands a week with several more planned places.
“I feel very relieved,” Moira Edwards, 88, said after receiving her first vaccination at Epsom Downs Racecourse in south London, most famous for the Derby.
“I think that’s the way back. I can’t understand anyone wanting to have it.”
The mostly elderly recipients, some of whom wore walkers, sticks or were pushed into wheelchairs to get to the center, were put on stickers “I had my vaccine against Covid.”
Hospitals and pharmacies will start offering the vaccine later this week and the government expects to have doses available for 12 million of the English population of 56 million by mid-February.
The same date goes to three million more in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Priority is being given to the elderly, nursing home residents and workers, clinically extremely vulnerable people and health and social care staff.
Some 2.4 million people have already been vaccinated across the UK since the launch of the Pfizer-BioNTech test began on December 8, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on a visit to Bristol.
That includes 40 percent of those over 80 and nearly a quarter of residents in the nursing home, he added, calling it a “race against time,” according to the guilty cases of the new variant.
Now Britain has also approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Moderna coups, and has drafted army logistics experts to help with inoculation.
– “The worst weeks” –
Britain is facing its worst disease outbreak since it arrived early last year.
Record case rates and the number of daily deaths have been attributed to a new, more contagious strain, which has amassed pressure on the NHS, prompting warnings of a shortage of critical care beds.
The state-run NHS is at risk of overflowing and the country is in its third blockade until at least mid-February, with predictions that the restrictions could last even longer.
In Northern Ireland, health chiefs said hospitals in the province were under intense pressure and two health trusts had to recruit off-duty staff to relieve pressure due to the rise in cases.
“The coming weeks will be the worst weeks of this pandemic in terms of the number of admissions to the NHS,” English medical director Chris Whitty told BBC television on Monday.
“What we need to do before the vaccines have had their effect … is that we really need to double down” on observing the blocking measures, he added.
On Saturday, Britain said it had recorded more than three million cases of coronavirus since the pandemic began last year.
On Friday it reported a record 1,325 deaths over a 24-hour period of people who tested positive for the virus, fearing that the death toll could remain steadily high for weeks.
The total death toll now stands at more than 80,000, the highest in Europe.
In Leatherhead, near Epsom, bodies were being stored in a 1,400-capacity temporary mortuary because there was no space in local hospitals.
Blocking rules include school closures, but the government has been criticized for not going any further, with evidence of the continued mix of close contacts. The government does not require people to wear masks outside.
But Johnson said that while the rules remained under review, compliance with existing guidelines would make a “huge, huge difference” in reducing infection rates.
He warned against “false trust (and) false complacency” due to the vaccine launch, which aims to reach all adults by the end of October.
Britain was in a “very dangerous time,” he said. “Now is the time for maximum vigilance, maximum observation and observance of the rules.”
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