The campaign to defeat the coronavirus is growing rapidly in places, with the UK starting to distribute the second vaccine in its arsenal on Monday. But authorities in France and other parts of Europe are under fire for slow launches and delays.
In the United States, government officials reported that vaccinations had accelerated significantly after a slow start. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, said over the weekend that 1.5 million photos had been taken in 72 hours, bringing the total to about 4 million in the past three weeks.
The UK became the first nation to start using the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University on Monday, stepping up its national inoculation campaign amid rising infection rates attributed to a new, seemingly more contagious variant of the virus.
Brian Pinker, an 82-year-old dialysis patient, received his first shot at Oxford University Hospital, saying in a statement: “Now I can look forward to celebrating 48 years of marriage.”
The UK vaccination program began on December 8 with the shooting developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
The country has seen more than 50,000 new coronavirus infections a day in the past six days, and deaths have exceeded 75,000, one of the worst taxes in Europe.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a wave of near-blockages on the weekend before Christmas and warned on Monday that “tough and tough” weeks were expected and that stricter restrictions would come soon: “If you look at the numbers, there is no doubt that he will take tougher action. “
Israel appears to be among the world leaders in the vaccination campaign, inoculating more than 1 million people, or about 12% of its population, in just over two weeks. The effort was stimulated by a high-quality centralized health system, as well as a small size and a concentrated population of the country.
Elsewhere, France’s cautious approach seems to have backfired, leaving only a few hundred people vaccinated after the first week and rekindling anger over the government’s handling of the pandemic.
The slow launch was blamed on mismanagement, a shortage of staff during the holidays and a complex consent policy designed to accommodate vaccine skepticism among the French.
“It’s a state scandal,” Jean Rottner, president of the Grand-Est region of eastern France, told France-2 television. “Vaccination becomes more complicated than buying a car.”
The Minister of Health, Olivier Veran, promised that by the end of Monday, “several thousand” people will be vaccinated, the pace increasing during the week. But that would leave France far behind its neighbors.
The French press released diagrams comparing vaccine figures from different countries: in France, a nation of 67 million people, only 516 people were vaccinated in the first six days, according to the French Ministry of Health. Germany’s total in the first week exceeded 200,000, and that of Italy was over 100,000. Millions have been vaccinated in the US and China.
The European Union has also faced growing criticism of the slow launch of COVID-19 photographs in the 27-nation bloc of 450 million people.
European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer said the main problem “is a problem of production capacity, a problem that everyone is facing”.
The EU has concluded six vaccination contracts with a variety of producers. But only the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been approved for use so far across the EU. EU drug regulators are expected to decide on Wednesday whether to recommend the authorization of the Moderna vaccine.
Aspects of Britain’s vaccination plans have also sparked controversy.
The British health authorities want to give the first dose to as many people as possible immediately, rather than keeping the vaccine in reserve to ensure that recipients receive the second vaccine on time a few weeks later. The plan requires extending the time between doses to 12 weeks.
Although two doses are required to fully protect against COVID-19, one dose provides a high level of protection.
Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said policy makers are required to balance potential risks and benefits in the midst of disaster.
“We have a crisis situation in the UK, with a new variant spreading rapidly and, as it became clear to everyone in 2020, delays are costing lives,” Evans said. “When dosage resources and people to be vaccinated are limited, then vaccinating more people with potentially lower efficacy is demonstrably better than more complete efficacy in just half.”
In the United States, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar rejected such a strategy, telling ABC’s “Good Morning America” that scientific data “simply does not exist” to support this approach.
Implementation in the US has been marked by a multitude of logistical obstacles, a combination of state and local government approaches and confusion. Some people do not know where or when to make a shot.
Fauci admitted over the weekend that “we are not where we want to be”, but expressed his optimism that the momentum will increase by mid-January. He said President-elect Joe Biden’s goal of vaccinating 100 million people in his first 100 days in office was “realistic.”
On Sunday, India, the second most populous country in the world, authorized its first two COVID-19 vaccines – one Oxford-AstraZeneca and another developed by an Indian company. The movement paves the way for a huge inoculation program in the desperate poor nation of 1.4 billion people.
India has confirmed more than 10.3 million cases of the virus, the second largest in the world behind the United States. It also reported about 150,000 deaths.
None of the approved vaccines require ultra-cold storage. Instead, they can be stored in refrigerators, making them easier to handle in less developed parts of the world.
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Associated Press writers around the world contributed to this report.