LONDON – Coronavirus has passed through nursing homes in the UK, just like in the US, causing tens of thousands of lives. Now Britain is hoping to turn the tide, thanks to a local vaccine that has not yet been licensed elsewhere in the West.
Over four million of the most at risk in the UK, almost 8% of the adult population, have been vaccinated with at least one vaccine.
Among them is more than half of the most fragile group: 300,000 elderly residents of nursing homes who cannot travel to get a chance. The key to achieving them was the mobile vaccination teams, armed with a coup developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca PLC.
Together with a network of family doctors and vaccination centers in sports centers, hotels and cathedrals, the coup helped keep the country on track to vaccinate its most vulnerable 15 million people by mid-February.
The government says the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has also been licensed in India, Morocco and some Latin American countries, has changed the game in reaching people in smaller care homes.