The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
UK back to normal by Easter with jab, says health expert
Ascientific adviser has said he is “quite optimistic” of enough Covid19 vaccinations being carried out by Easter for normality to begin to re sume , p rov ided authorities do not “screw up” distribution of the jab.
Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, told MPs the announcement by Pfizer and BioNTech meant there could be two or three vaccines by the new year.
A member of the UK Government ’s vaccine taskforce, he said there was a 70-80% chance that the most vulnerable among the population could be vaccinated by Easter.
During a Commons session on coronavirus, former health secretary Jeremy Hunt asked: “What are your percentage chances in this situation of g e tt i n g to Easter and having vaccinated the vulnerable, the most vulnerable parts of our population,
Easter we a b o u t normality?”
Appearing before MPs yesterday, Prof Bell replied: “I think we’ve got a 70-80% chance of doing that.
“That’s provided they don ’t screw up the distribution of the vaccine, that’s not my job.
“But provided they don’t screw that up, it’ll all be fine.”
Initial results from the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its vaccine partner BioNTech suggest their jab was 90% effective at protecting people from Covid-19.
Pr o f Bell called the announcement a “massive step forward”, adding: “It also signals, I think, that many of the other vaccines that have the same immunogenicity are likely also to be efficacious.
“So I wouldn ’t be surprised if we hit the new year with two or three vaccines, all of which could so that postcould think r e s um i n g be distributed, and that’s why I’m quite optimistic of g e t t i n g e n o u g h vaccinations done in the first quarter of next year that, by spring, things will start to look much more normal than they do now.”
Appearing before a joint session of the Commons Health and Social Care Committee and Science and Technology Committee, Pr o f Bell said it was “unlikely” that the Pfizer/ BioNTech vaccine would be administered by GPs.
He said: “If we get two or three vaccines, which I suspect we will by the new year, then they will have d ifferent routes of distribution, in my view.
“Some of them you administer just like the flu vaccine – the Pfizer vaccine needs a cold chain at minus 80.
“The idea that that’ll be done through local GPs sounds a bit unlikely to me.
“I think they’re going to have to have a bespoke solution for the Pfizer vaccine, which is absolutely worth it, but they will have to think quite hard about how to do that.”
Prof Bell also said people who have tested positive for coronavirus and spent two weeks in self-isolation should be given “freedom passes” allowing them to do anything they want.
He said the c urrent contact tracing system was based around a “big stick that beats people up”.
“We are living in a world where we need to reopen society back up again and we need a structure to do that, and at the moment we don’t have that structure because the who le philosophy has ‘ let’s beat them up with a stick’ rather than ‘ let’s give them a carrot’, he added”
Lateral flow tests, which have a turnaround time of under an hour, could allow people to be checked “every other day” if they are a contact without them having to self-isolate, he added.