Vaccines: a logistical mountain to climb
The PM “has a spring in his step”, said Nick Timothy in The Daily Telegraph. The stock market is up; Christmas is back on; and with the first vaccine against Covid-19 approved by regulators this week, there are hopes that normal life could soon resume. But the road ahead is still steep and rocky. In some ways, the Government is ahead of the game. It has bought 40 million doses of the approved Pfizer vaccine, which has been found to have 95% efficacy; 100 million of the cheaper one from AstraZeneca/ Oxford; and a further 217 million from five other developers. But approving and procuring vaccines is one thing; delivering them is another. Each requires two doses, within 28 days – which poses a series of challenges for Nadhim Zahawi, the new Minister for Vaccine Deployment. Pfizer’s vaccine has to be stored at -70ºC, so he will need to set up a “cold” supply chain. He must also build a series of vaccination centres; and make sure there are staff and equipment (needles, gloves, swabs) to administer tens of millions of jabs. That means mobilising the NHS, local councils and the Army – at speed.
Added to all that, there is the fraught issue of vaccine priority, said Colin Drury in The Independent: care-home residents and staff are due to be vaccinated first, but the difficulties of transporting and storing the Pfizer vaccine may make that difficult to achieve. Finally, you have to persuade the population to be vaccinated. In Bradford, they’re already working on that, said The Times. With reports of high levels of “hesitancy” there, “vaccine ambassadors” are being recruited to go out into the community and dispel myths about the jab. At the same time, the Army has mobilised an “information warfare” unit, to combat online anti-vaxxer propaganda, some of which comes from hostile states; and scientists from Imperial College are going on TikTok to reassure young people about the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness.
But if people still don’t come forward in sufficient number, then what, asked Stuart Ritchie in The Spectator. One option is to make the jab mandatory: it sounds authoritarian, but childhood vaccinations are mandatory in France. The Government, however, says this is off the cards. In Australia, “no jab, no pay” laws mean people who don’t get their kids vaccinated are deprived of benefits. There has been talk of immunity passports – without which you’d not be allowed in a pub; and even of paying people to have the jab. But the hope is that such measures will not be necessary. The vaccine is safe. With luck, when the doubters see millions of others having it, and getting their lives back to normal, that will be persuasion enough.