London, United Kingdom – The United Kingdom prepares to become the first country to roll out the Covid-19 vaccine by beginning the vaccination this week.
During early December, UK became the first country in the world to authorize a Covid-19 vaccine after they gave the pharmaceutical corporation, Pfizer and their German partner BioNTech the authorization to use their Covid-19 vaccine which had proven to be 95% effective in its Phase 3 trial.
Now, the country of 67 Million people is on its way to become the first country in history to roll out the Covid-19 vaccine as they prepare to administer the first doses of Pfizer vaccine on Tuesday of this week.
This coming week will be a historic moment as we begin vaccination against Covid-19.
Matt Hancock, the U.K.’s health secretary, said in a statement.
As with every other country, UK will also be focusing on vaccinating the people who are at the highest risk of infection. They are the citizens over the age of 80, frontline healthcare workers, doctors and other members who at the front line to protect the country from the virus.
UK ordered a total of 40 million doses that can be used to vaccinate 20 million people in the country. Out of these 40 million doses, 800,000 are expected to arrive to the United Kingdom this week.
While the Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at minus 70 degrees, the company has already made arrangements and prepared charter flights to securely import their Covid-19 vaccine at minus 70 degrees by keeping them in increased quantities of dry ice while they are being flown to different countries.
As the Pfizer vaccine needs to be kept at specialized freezers which are rare in medical facilities and can only last for five days in a regular fridge, the healthy ministry of UK informed that they will be first administering the vaccine in 50 different hospitals in the country rather than keeping them in clinics.
While the United States and the European Union was considerably ahead than all of the countries in approving the vaccine, UK managed to go ahead them and authorized the use of the vaccine in no time.
According to Pfizer and US biotech firm Moderna Inc, they submitted their vaccines for emergency use authorization to the U.S.’s Food and Drug Administration on November and are expected to receive the results during December. However, the United States has still not given any response regarding the authorization.
However, White House vaccine chief, Moncef Slaoui informed that the Pfizer vaccine is likely to get approved on December and that they will start giving out the vaccine to first Americans the next day of its approval.
While the Moderna vaccine has proven to be 100% effective at preventing severe Covid-19 and 94% at preventing the disease more broadly, it appears that this vaccine has an upper hand in the vaccine competition than Pfizer due to its effectiveness rate and storage.
While Pfizer has complicated storage requirements, Moderna claims that their vaccine has a longer shelf life when it is refrigerated at the ‘normal’ fridge temperatures and at room temperature as well, making it a lot easier and less costly to store the vaccine.
Nevertheless, as both of the vaccines have a considerably high effectiveness rate, they are likely to be given approval for emergency use during December increasing hope for a better new year.
