Frankfurt
Seven mass coronavirus vaccination sites opened across England on Monday as the government raced to dose millions of people while a new strain of the disease runs rampant across the country. The sites include football stadiums and a horse racing course, and are located in cities including Bristol, London, Newcastle and Manchester.
They are to vaccinate thousands per week and several more sites are expected to follow, according to the National Health Service (NHS) in England. “I feel very relieved,” said Moira Edwards, 88, after receiving her first vaccination at Epsom Downs Racecourse, south of London, which is more famous for the Derby.
“I feel this is the way back. I can’t understand anybody not wanting to have it,” she added. The mainly elderly recipients of the jab, some of whom used walkers, sticks or were pushed in wheelchairs to get to the centre, were given “I’ve had my Covid vaccination” stickers.
Hospitals and pharmacies are set to begin offering the vaccine later this week, with the government hoping to have doses available for 12 million of England’s 56 million population by mid-February. A further three million are being targeted by the same date in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Priority is being given to the elderly, care home residents and workers, the clinically extremely vulnerable, and health and social care staff. Some 2.4 million people have already been vaccinated across the UK since the roll-out began of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab on December 8, according to vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi.
Britain has since approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Moderna jabs. The government has drafted in logistics experts from the army to help in the inoculation drive.
German company BioNTech, which developed the first coronavirus vaccine approved in the West, said Monday it expects to produce 2 billion doses in 2021, up from the previous forecast of 1.3 billion doses.
“We now believe that we can potentially deliver approximately 2 billion doses in total by the end of 2021, which incorporates the updated 6-dose label,” said the company, referring to the additional dose that could be extracted from each vial of the vaccine. A new factory in Marburg, Germany, is also expected to open in February, and would help to ramp up its production capacity.—AFP
