The UK gave the first shots of a Covid-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford, in a race against a more rapidly spreading coronavirus variant that has caused new restrictions on movement across most of the country.
The first injection was given to an 82-year-old kidney dialysis patient at Oxford Hospital on Monday morning.
Britain increases its vaccination campaign as coronavirus infections increase across the country, placing the country on the brink of another national exclusion. It is moving faster on approvals and implementation than the US or the European Union, which are clearing the AstraZeneca-Oxford product despite clinical trials involving a smaller number of participants and being hampered by a dosing error. A regulatory decision to extend the interval between doses of the two-shot vaccines to as many as 12 weeks has raised further questions.
Brian Pinker receives the AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford Covid-19 vaccine in Oxford on 4 January.
Photographer: Steve Parsons / PA Wire / Bloomberg
A new tribe it is estimated to be as much as 70% more transmissible, promoting the revival of the pandemic in the UK. Schools have been closed in much of the country, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned that stricter restrictions may be on the way.
British regulators cleared the AstraZeneca-Oxford shot last week, which was its first worldwide approval. This is the second injection allowed for emergency use in Britain, after one of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE has the begin December begins.
According to the Department of Health and Social Affairs, more than a million people in Britain have received injections of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
How the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine works
The viral vector vaccine uses a harmless virus to transport genetic material that triggers an immune response to the coronavirus
Sources: University of Oxford, AstraZeneca, Bloomberg Research
The UK raced ahead of France, where only about 500 people got first shots from this weekend. President Emmanuel Macron came under fire due to the slow pace of implementation of the country, which has been hampered by caution amid the high levels of vaccine skepticism. France faces not only European neighbors such as Britain and Germany, but also Israel, where more than 12% of the population has already received injections.
Read Bloomberg’s Covid-19 vaccine detection
In the UK, more than 500,000 doses of AstraZeneca-Oxford will be available from Monday, and it will be delivered to hospitals in the first few days. The UK aims to expand the number of vaccination rooms to more than 1,000, with as many as 100 hospitals and 180 services led by GPs online this week.
Although the newly approved vaccine has a lower effectiveness than the Pfizer-BioNTech one in clinical trials, it has some important advantages: it is cheaper and easier to transport and store, and requires only refrigerator temperatures rather than deep freezing. This makes it crucial for the broader global vaccination situation.
David Nabarro, special envoy of the World Health Organization for Covid-19, called for warning amid the global rush to vaccinate populations.
“I really want to appeal to every leader to slow down just a little bit in a hurry to get the vaccine in as many arms as possible and give more time to the systematic planning of a real global operation,” he said. said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
The NHS grants the first injections under a two-shot regimen approved by the Medicines and Health care Regulatory Agency for Products. The second can be given as much as 12 weeks later, as the UK seeks to maximize the number of vulnerable people receiving the first section, which provides some protection against infection.
The UK has also taken a more flexible approach to the two-dose regimen, saying that in certain circumstances – such as when it is not known which vaccination a patient first received – the second admission may be administered with another company’s product.
The British regulator has yet to publish full data supporting its decision to allow a greater time interval between shots, which the British Medical Association opposes.
“It is extremely unfair to tens of thousands of our patients at greatest risk to try to reschedule their appointments now,” said Richard Vautrey, chairman of the Association’s General Practitioners Committee.
– With help by Janice Kew
(Updates with the WHO adviser’s comments from 10th paragraph)