Seven mass vaccination sites against coronavirus opened on Monday across England as the government rushed to dose millions of people as a new strain of the disease spread across the country.
The sites include football stadiums and a horse racing course and are located in cities such as Bristol, London, Newcastle and Manchester.
They are to vaccinate thousands a week with several other sites 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 in south London, which is best known for the Derby.
“I feel like this is the way back. I can’t understand anyone who doesn’t want to have it.”
The older beneficiaries of the jab, some of whom used walkers, chopsticks or were pushed into wheelchairs to reach the center, were given “I had my Covid vaccination” stickers.
Hospitals and pharmacies will start offering the vaccine later this week, and the government hopes to have doses available for 12 million of England’s population of 56 million by mid-February.
Another three million are targeted at the same time in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Priority is given to the elderly, residents and care workers, those who are extremely vulnerable from a clinical point of view and medical and social care staff.
About 2.4 million people have been vaccinated in the UK since the launch of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab on December 8, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said during a visit to Bristol.
It includes 40 percent of those over 80 and nearly a quarter of nursing home residents, he added, calling it a “race against time” as they blamed the new variant.
The UK has now also approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Moderna jabs and developed military logistics experts to support inoculation.
– “The worst weeks” –
Britain is facing the worst outbreak of the disease since it arrived early last year.
Record case rates and daily deaths are charged with a new, more contagious strain that has accumulated pressure on the NHS, leading to warnings about the lack of critical care beds.
The state-run NHS risks being overwhelmed, and the country is in a third stalemate until at least mid-February, with forecasts that the restrictions could last even longer.
In Northern Ireland, health chiefs said hospitals in the province are under intense pressure, and two health trusts have had to recruit out-of-service staff to ease the pressure due to the increase in cases.
“The next few weeks will be the worst weeks of this pandemic in terms of numbers in the NHS,” England medical director Chris Whitty told BBC television on Monday.
“What we need to do before the vaccines take effect … is that we really need to double down on compliance,” he added.
Britain said on Saturday it had recorded more than three million cases of coronavirus since the pandemic began last year.
On Friday, it reported a record 1,325 deaths over a 24-hour period of people who tested positive for the virus, fearing that deaths could remain steadily high for weeks.
The total number of deaths now stands at over 80,000, the highest in Europe.
At Leatherhead, near Epsom, the bodies were stored in a temporary morgue with a capacity of 1,400, as there was no space at local hospitals.
Blocking rules include school closures, but the government has been criticized for not moving forward, with evidence of continued mixing of close contact. The government does not ask people to wear masks outside.
But Johnson said that while the rules were kept under control, following existing guidelines would make a “huge, huge difference” in reducing infection rates.
He warned against “false confidence (and) false satisfaction” over the launch of the vaccine, which aims to reach all adults by the end of October.
Britain was in a “very dangerous time,” he said. “Now is the time for maximum vigilance, maximum observation, compliance with the rules.”
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