‘BEGINNING OF THE END’
VACCINATIONS GET UNDER WAY AS VIRUS FIGHTBACK BEGINS:
YES, it’s begun. The first people in Wales have received Pfizer’s Covid-19 jab as part of a mass vaccination programme.
Jabs were being administered at 70 hospital hubs across the UK from Tuesday – dubbed ‘V-Day’ – with vaccinations being carried out in all of Wales’ health boards.
Frontline health workers David Farrell, 51, from Llandow, and Lara Jesani, 26, from Cardiff, were among the first at a vaccination centre in Cardiff.
Other early vaccinations were carried out at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board’s Princess of Wales Hospital.
Some 40 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will be available across the UK, with Wales getting its allocation based on its population. In the first wave of vaccine deliveries, Wales will receive almost 40,000 doses, enough for nearly 20,000 people.
All Welsh health boards will start administering vaccines to care home staff, those over 80 years and frontline health and social care workers most at risk - more than 6,000 doses will be given by the end of this week.
The vaccine has been shown to be 95% effective against Covid-19 and works across all age groups, including the elderly.
Grandmother Margaret Keenan, 90, became the first person in the world to have the vaccine when she was given the jab at 6.31am in Coventry on Tuesday.
First Minister Mark Drakeford said: “Last week, Wales was the first country in the world to receive supplies of the Covid-19 vaccine. Today, I’m very proud Wales has become one of the first countries in the world to begin the roll-out of the vaccine to its population.
“2020 has been a very difficult year for all of us. This vaccine is a small glimmer of light at the end of what has been a long and dark tunnel.
“But the fact we have a vaccine does not mean we can stop doing those things that keep us safe. We must all continue to do our bit to prevent the spread of coronavirus: regular hand washing, social distancing, and wearing a face covering where required to protect yourself and others.”
The vaccination programme comes as Wales now has the highest coronavirus infection rate in the UK - with 267.8 cases for every 100k people in the last week, compared to 149.5 in England, 143.6 in Northern Ireland and 100.3 in Scotland.
Health Minister Vaughan Gething said that there were now eight local authorities in Wales with rates higher than 400 cases per 100,000 people – four times as many areas as on Friday.
He added that there are now more than 1,800 coronavirus-related patients in hospitals around Wales – the highest number ever recorded.
Rajiv Patel, 30, a clinical pharmacist at the Princess of Wales Hospital, has just recovered from Covid-19 so must wait 28 days before he can have the vaccine.
“The main symptoms I experienced was coughing, I had a bit of pain by my rib cage, night sweats, a fever and a loss of taste and smell.
“I’m healthy, I’ve got no underlying health conditions. It just goes to show the virus doesn’t discriminate. I can affect anybody and a lot of people I know have had much worse outcomes than me.”
He described the vaccine rollout as “an historic day for Wales and across the UK”.
“It’s the beginning of the end of this pandemic, but we can’t take our eye off the ball just yet. We still need to adhere to hands, face, space. These things need to be practised as we go into the winter months.”
Mr Patel said everyone at the hospital has pulled together during the pandemic.
“We have had some Covid positivity in our department, and the virus has had repercussions for some medicine supplies shortages.
“We are now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel now. It has gone
through rigorous clinical trials and safety, efficacy and tolerability.”
Catherine Theron, a senior matron at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend who has been an NHS nurse of 20 years, was scheduled for the vaccine on Tuesday.
“It’s a really exciting day for our frontline staff who have worked really hard over the last year to battle this pandemic,” she said.
“They have seen some really difficult times. They are tired, they are exhausted and are running on low steam. But this vaccine is giving them hope and there is now an air of excitement throughout this hospital today.”
She added that it has been “a really scary time” for frontline NHS staff since March.
“I’m not going to lie and say it’s been easy. We have had a lot of staff who have been unwell, have had relatives unwell and we’ve seen our hospital be overwhelmed with Covid patients.”
But she said it is vital people maintain social distancing and hand hygiene and wear masks.
“We have got a long way to go to vaccinate our entire population and start returning to normal. This is just the beginning.”
Richard Johnson, a consultant surgeon at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend, was one of the first to receive the vaccine.
“It was very straightforward and very quick, there was no pain and I feel fine after having it,” he said.
In the short-term, he admitted the vaccine will make little difference to infection rates until more people are immunised.
“This is the start of a very long road back to recovery. The wider we get people vaccinated the less Covid we’ll see, the less spread we’ll see and there will be less demand on the hospital going forward,” he said.
Mr Johnson said the hospital has been incredibly busy in recent times, particularly as more “routine” NHS services are resuming.
“The staff have been working extremely hard. It has been very difficult trying to balance the care of patients with Covid and the care of patients without Covid because the NHS is still open for business for all diseases,” he said.
“There has been reduced capacity in the outpatient clinic because of social distancing, and initially at the start of the pandemic we had long turnaround times between patients in theatres because of all the infection control procedures we had to follow.
“Things have improved but it will take a long time to catch up with the huge backlog that’s been building.”
Mr Johnson reassured members of the public who may be in two minds about having the jab.
“This vaccine has been widely tested on many thousands of people. It has gone through all the appropriate safety checks, it has been through our national regulator,” he said.
“It has been shown to be safe and I would encourage everyone to have the vaccine when it’s their time.”
A&E nurse Delyth Hogg was the very first person to receive the vaccine at the Princess of Wales Hospital.
Meanwhile, another 31 people have died with coronavirus in Wales.
The latest statistics released by Public Health Wales ( PHW) yesterday show another 780 people have tested positive for the virus in Wales.
It brings the number of positive tests since the outbreak began to 91,792 while 2,725 people have died with lab-confirmed coronavirus in Wales.
The infection rate across Wales stood at 308.3 per 100,000 people based on the seven days up to December 4.
Wales has by far the highest coronavirus infection rate of any part of the UK. England’s rate is 149.5 cases per 100k people.