Vaccination programme should be a matter of national pride

THERE is a great deal riding on a successful roll-out of the coronavirus vaccine. So it is not surprising that glitches in the delivery of the drug, occasional errors in the way people are called for their jabs and other administrative bumps in the road are seized upon and pored over by those who feel they, their cohort or their region have been in some way let down.

But none of that should be allowed to take away from what is – at time of writing – a simply incredible job of work being carried out by the pharmaceutical companies making the three vaccines now passed for use in the UK and the NHS, which is administering them to people in ever-greater numbers across the country.

The fact that the South West is currently marginally ahead of the rest of the country, with 7.6% of the population already vaccinated, is excellent news. But as the roll-out progresses it is inevitable all regions will move ahead and then fall back again. The goal, to have all the adult population offered a jab by the end of the summer, is the main concern. We simply need to get there as quickly, safely and efficiently as possible.

The progress made so far towards that goal has been brilliant. Wartime analogies are – for the most part

– inappropriate for a global pandemic in which people in every part of the planet are fighting a common enemy. But the way that the nation – not just the health care professionals, but the support staff and the volunteers too – have risen to the challenge of delivering millions of jabs to a desperately tight timescale can be compared to the way a majority responded to the threat of war.

In World War II there was an allout effort to fill the roles left vacant – in the factories and on the farms – when the men went to fight. Civilians, like those who joined the Home Guard and those who responded to specific emergencies like the evacuation of Dunkirk, were ready to put aside their own concerns and do their bit.

Today the risks are rather different but the selfless way so many have responded to the call, not to arms but to vaccines, has been just as impressive.

Modern Britain can look like a very different place to the Britain of the 1940s. But we sometimes look back on those days through rosetinted glasses and view today’s society rather less generously.

There will be many lessons to learn from the coronavirus pandemic. But one of importance is, surely, that, despite the way that much of the coverage of events has highlighted negative behaviour, for the most part people have behaved properly. In some cases they have shown great courage too, both in a professional capacity and as ordinary citizens. We should remember that.

No one can predict with any certainty the course of this pandemic. But the vaccination programme is at the moment the only realistic way to make us all safe again – which is why it is so heartening to see the progress being made. And, while it is the scientists and the medics who are the backbone of the roll-out, ordinary people are doing their bit. And that’s what is making it such a success.