Friday 4 December 2020

The vaccination program begins

After last weeks post in a week where even the mamil's had the odd extra layer on as winter made a big entrance, we did have a bit of good news.


On Wednesday morning, so early it missed that day's morning newspapers, it was announced the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine had been approved under the emergency approval system for use in the UK, a world first.

The other vaccines are still at the approval evaluation stage although the outcomes are expected from the weekend onward but this doesn't just mean we can say we're the first to approve it.

Actually it has enabled us to be the first country in the West to begin the roll out of a mass vaccination program starting from next week starting with NHS workers as one issue with this particular vaccine is finding a safe effective way to deploy in smaller batches to enable easy provision more at the grass roots community level as it needs to be stored at over minus 70 degrees.

It just happens hospitals have freezers that work at that temperature with enough depth to take it so we're starting from there where the AstraZenaca/Oxford vaccine will work with just a regular freezer which is potentially much easier to take out to chemists and surgeries.

As the newspaper (and many others) alerts readers to is this is going to take quite a time as it will easily be the biggest mass vaccination program ever which will take months to work its way through near enough all of us.

It won't be just a month of vaccination and back to normal.

It is however extremely good news and cause for justified celebration in the battle for the only realistic way out of the many restrictions that while necessary we all have been struggling with.

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