Britain announces AstraZeneca vaccine, leading in the fight against coronavirus

London (Reuters)-British began vaccination of population with COVID-19 shots developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca on Monday, promoting a scientific “victory” to become a western pioneer in vaccination against the virus ..

Britain, which is rushing to vaccinate its population faster than the United States and other European countries, is the first country to roll out Oxford / AstraZeneca shots, despite Russia and China immunizing citizens for months. is.

Less than a month after the UK first deployed the vaccine developed by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, dialysis patient Brian Pinker, 82, first shot Oxford / AstraZeneca at 0730 GMT.

“I’m very happy to have the COVID vaccine today. I’m really proud of the vaccine invented in Oxford,” said Pinker, a retired maintenance manager undergoing dialysis for kidney disease, who developed the vaccine. I did.

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

“Today’s nurses, doctors and staff were all great,” he said.

The UK is tackling one of the world’s sixth worst deaths and one of the worst economic blows of the COVID crisis, already armed with over one million COVID-19 vaccines. ..

“It’s a victory in British science that has reached where we are,” Hancock told Sky. “From the beginning, we found that vaccines were the only long-term method.”

The government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson has given the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine 100 million times so that it can be stored at a refrigerator temperature of 2-8 degrees Celsius, which is easier to distribute than Pfizer injections.

Six UK hospitals are the first of the approximately 530,000 UK-prepared doses. The program will be expanded to hundreds of other UK sites in the coming days, and the government hopes to deliver tens of millions of doses within the coming months.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had received 4.2 million initial doses of COVID-19 vaccine and 13.07 million doses as of Saturday morning.

But Israel is a world leader. More than one-tenth of the population is vaccinated, and Israel is currently vaccinated more than 150,000 times a day.

Vaccine race

The UK will be the first Western country to approve and deploy the COVID-19 vaccine and is confident that advancing the vaccine will provide Johnson with a valuable opportunity to get out of the COVID crisis faster than any other country. I will.

While other Western countries have taken a longer and more cautious approach to vaccine deployment, Russia and China have given citizens several different vaccines that are still in late-stage trials for several months. doing.

China approved the first public COVID-19 vaccine on December 31st. This is a shot developed by an affiliate of state-owned pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm. According to the company, it is 79% effective against the virus.

Russia said on November 24 that the Sputnik V vaccine developed by the Gamalaya Institute is 91.4% effective based on the results of mid-term trials. Vaccination started in August and has been given to more than 100,000 people so far.

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

Scientists were noted by ITV political editor Robert Peston, who said he was not completely convinced that the COVID-19 vaccine would act on a new variant of the coronavirus found in South Africa. ..

COVID CRISIS

More than 75,000 people have died from COVID in the UK, but more extensive measures have killed 82,624 and the number of cases is skyrocketing, supported by another variant of the virus.

Johnson said on Sunday that stricter restrictions are likely to be introduced, even though millions of citizens are already living under the strictest rules.

England is currently divided into four different restricted tiers depending on the spread of the virus, and Hancock said some tier 3 rules in the country were clearly not working.

When asked if the government was considering imposing a new blockade, Hancock said, “We do not rule out anything.”

The epidemic of the subspecies virus has forced the government to change its approach to vaccination. The UK currently prioritizes the first vaccination of as many people as possible over the second vaccination. Delaying the distribution of second shots should help increase supply.

Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford Vaccine Group and principal investigator in the injection trial, also received the vaccine.

“This is a really important moment. We are overwhelmed by the disease,” he told the BBC TV. “I think it gives us a little hope, but we think there are some tough weeks ahead.”