The launch of vaccines gives the UK a narrow victory in the fight against a pandemic

Because the vaccine could only be refrigerated for three days once it arrived at the clinic, health workers knew they had to inject 400 doses a day on Saturday to deplete the supply. There was already a line of people waiting for “punctures,” so doctors quickly diluted the vaccine, put the vials on the trays, and handed them out to a team of assistants.

This is the first line of 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, even an open-air museum in the Midlands, known to television viewers as the setting for the popular crime series “Peaky Blinders”.

With nearly 8 million people, or 11.7% of the population, already receiving the first shot, Britain’s vaccination rate is the fastest of any major nation in the world. Only Israel and the United Arab Emirates are moving faster.

Rapid implantation is a rare success for a country whose response to coronavirus has been adverse, affected by delays, reversals and mixed messages. All of this has contributed to a death toll that recently surpassed 100,000 and consolidated Britain’s status as the most affected country in Europe.

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 on Friday imposed export restrictions on vaccines made on the block after accusing a British-based vaccine manufacturer, AstraZeneca, of favoring its domestic market.

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

At the Bloomsbury clinic, however, there was a clearly British atmosphere to continue with. Patients, mostly elderly, waited patiently in the queue, rolled up their sleeves, and retreated to an outside gazebo for 15 minutes to monitor for possible reactions.

“Many of my friends have had it,” Emerenciana Mora, 72, a retired switchboard operator, said about the vaccine as she watched as a medical assistant, Nasra Yusuf, prepared the needle. “Even the queen has had it.”

The divergence between Britain and its European neighbors has led some to call for an early anticipation of Brexit. Britain’s divorce from the European Union helped give it the political go-ahead to authorize several vaccines before the block and quickly block its own vaccine production from AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

France, on the other hand, has only vaccinated 1.8% of its population and Germany 2.6%, according to figures collected by Our World in Data. This reflects the shortage of supply that has multiplied 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 basic decisions by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government.

Instead of hiring the campaign from private companies or building it from scratch, as it did with its costly and ineffective contact tracking operation, the government has put vaccination in the hands of the National Health Service, which, despite financial tensions, he is still revered by the British public.

Beyond state hospitals, doctors are at the forefront of the program. This not only keeps trusted local doctors, experienced with seasonal flu inoculations, at the forefront, but has also allowed these doctors to accurately target people from the government’s top priority groups.

This contrasts with the more fragmented approach in the United States. While Americans have had to struggle with appointments on complicated online portals and overwhelmed phone lines, British hospitals and doctors have run the programming themselves, allowing them to start with their older, vulnerable patients.

And while U.S. states use complicated rules to dictate who is eligible for vaccines, which has helped curb deployment in some places, Britain has a clear system of prioritizing people who, because of their age, , are at higher risk of dying from the virus, along with nursing home helpers and health care workers who treat them.

“We work through these priority groups without any absolute deviation,” said Dr. Daniel Beck, a GP and head of a federation of doctors, who was busy preparing vials at the clinic. “It benefits everyone, whether it’s someone who left home without a degree or if he’s a gentleman.”

Among the 6,000 people vaccinated at the Bloomsbury clinic since mid-December was Joan Collins, 87, the British actress famous for her role in “Dynasty”. But Beck said his top priority was to try to reduce vaccine vacillation among racial and ethnic minorities, which polls have shown to be more suspicious than vaccine support by white people.

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

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

It was by no means typical of Britain’s broader response.

Few foreign leaders have fought the pandemic like Johnson. He abandoned large-scale contact tracing and resisted imposing a blockade, and then ended up himself in an intensive care unit after contracting the virus.

But during those chaotic early days, their ministers went on to invest in vaccines and secured first contracts with manufacturers. They also recruited Kate Bingham, a British venture capitalist, to lead a government working group on vaccines.

In March, the government provided initial funding (£ 2.6 million, or $ 3.5 million) to the Oxford research team. In May, when the vaccine was still in clinical trials, Britain reached an agreement with AstraZeneca to buy tens of millions of doses, three months before the European Union negotiated its purchases.

With concerns about vaccine protectionism, British officials were determined to make any native vaccine easy and accessible to the British. They spoke to the Oxford team while negotiating with Merck and other pharmaceutical companies looking for a partner to mass-produce and distribute the vaccine.

Oxford finally reached an agreement with AstraZeneca, which is headquartered in Cambridge.

“They made it pretty clear to me and other people who wanted to know about the deal and were anxious about vaccine nationalism,” said John Bell, an Oxford professor and member of the working group, last year. of government vaccines, referring to the British. health officials.

Now two factories in England are making the vaccine and a Welsh company is preparing it for distribution. The British government has said most of its shipments of AstraZeneca vaccines come from this supply chain.

AstraZeneca has said its first deal with Britain has helped it plan the inevitable manufacturing hiccups before it starts distributing the vaccine. Production problems at a Belgian plant led the company to announce that it would reduce deliveries to Europe by 60%, which sparked the dispute between channels.

“With the UK, we have had an additional three months to solve all the problems we experienced,” Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, told an Italian newspaper La Repubblica this week.

On Friday, EU drug regulators authorized the AstraZeneca vaccine for all adults, following the precedent set last month by the British regulator.

In the meantime, Britain may soon get a new vaccine.

Novavax, a biotechnology company based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, reported Friday that its vaccine has been shown to be 89.3% effective in a large-scale trial conducted in Britain. The government has secured 60 million doses, which will be made at a plant in the north-east of England. If approved by British regulators, the vaccine will be delivered in the second half of 2021.

All in all, the British government has spent at least £ 11.7 billion, or $ 16 billion, on developing, manufacturing, buying and administering vaccines.

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

That doesn’t mean the launch has been stress-free. With hospital invasions and a more contagious variant spreading across the country, Britain has opted to give more people partial protection in a single dose, rather than quickly giving fewer people full protection in two doses.

Doctors who have been delayed by booster shots have become angry with the approach and have accused the government of making them the subject of a new risky experiment that worries them that it will make vaccines less effective. Immunologists have expressed concern that a country full of people with only partial immunity could generate vaccine-resistant mutations, while Pfizer said the strategy is not backed by data collected in clinical trials.

But the idea of ​​prioritizing the first shots has gained strength in countries battling the growing virus, and deficiencies in vaccine supply are looking for ways to get partial protection for their population.

For harassed doctors at the Bloomsbury clinic, the biggest challenge is simply getting a steady dose supply.

“Our biggest problem is that we don’t know, week by week, what deliveries we receive,” said Dr. Ammara Hughes, the clinical director, as she eagerly scanned her iPhone for news of the upcoming delivery. “Logistics is difficult.”

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