All Eyes on the U.K. as the Rollout of the Pfizer Vaccine Begins

The U.K. has begun the rollout of the Pfizer vaccine and all eyes will be on them for things they do right and things they get wrong. It has been less than a week that Britain has granted emergency use authorization and because of limited supplies and how difficult the Pfizer vaccine is to ship and store, only about 50 hospital hubs will be able to administer the vaccine for now. Joanna Sugden, assistant editor at the WSJ based in London, joins us for how vaccine distribution is going in the U.K.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Wednesday, December nine. I'm Oscar Ramires from the Daily
Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America.
The UK has begun the rollout of the Fightser vaccine,
and all eyes will be on them for things that
they do right and things that they do wrong. It
has been less than a week that Britain has granted
emergency use authorization, and because of limited supplies and how

(00:21):
difficult the Fightser vaccine is to ship and store, only
about fifty hospital hubs will be able to administer the
vaccine for now. Joanna Sugden, assistant editor at The Wall
Street Journal based in London, joins us for how the
vaccine distribution is going in the UK. Thanks for joining us, Joanna,
It's a pleasure, thanks for The UK has begun the

(00:41):
rollout of Fiser's COVID nineteen vaccine. They're the first Western
country to do so, and all eyes are on them
to see how the rollout is gonna go, to see, uh,
you know here in the United States, to see what
we can learn from them, what we can do better.
They got started less than a week after Britain had
granted the emergency use authorization there and The first people

(01:02):
to get them were a ninety year old woman named
Maggie Keegan and also William Shakespeare, two elderly people, and
one called William's Jakespeare. There's been plenty of jokes flying
around about that all as well, and as well being
my favorite one. Yeah, but it's great news and people
are understandably excited. But there is also a sense of

(01:22):
caution at the same time. But yes, it's fantastic news
at the end of a difficult year. Yeah, let's talk
a little bit about the caution. There has been some
aversion to people wanting to take the vaccine. I guess
there was a pole in the UK that said about
seventy nine people said that they would take it. In
the United States, it's a little different. It's a lot less.
It's only six that said that they would take it

(01:43):
right away. There's kind of less anti VAXs sentiment in
the UK. I would say it is a minority of
people who have since the pandemic started, going out on
anti lockdown protests or anti vaccine protests more recently, kind
of fueled by things might read online about what the
vaccine contains, misinformation about how the speed of the vaccine

(02:08):
um and how quickly has been approved. But the regulators
are extremely stringent and they have approved things concurrently rather
than sequentially, and that's how they've done it so quickly.
But yes, there is a small pocket of people who
are against taking the vaccine. We think about a third
according to recent polls. Let's talk a little bit about

(02:28):
the distribution and how all that is going to go.
As far as doses go, it seems like the UK
only has about enough doses for about twenty million people,
and maybe about seven million doses they said that they'd
get by the end of the year. And to kind
of complicate that, we know that Fiser's vaccine specifically is
very difficult to ship and store. It has to be
kept really really cold and in special refrigerated units. That

(02:51):
means that only about fifty hospital hubs there in London
will be able to distribute this. That's across England. Yeah,
fifty hubs across the of England at the moment. That's
their initial thing, just this week. That's how they're starting off.
So they're vaccinating the vaccinators and also vulnerable people, vulnerable
elderly people who might be coming in for an operation

(03:12):
or being exposed to the hospital setting anyway, so they
vaccinate them while they're there on the doses. They have
ordered forty million from FISA, But the UK has taken
this kind of port earlier approach to the vaccines, where
it's has orders with seven companies who are developing vaccines,
and that's how it hopes to reach the whole population.

(03:33):
I think it has a hundred million on order from
Astra Zeneca and Oxford University. The vaccine that is seeing
itself up for emergency use approval in the in the
coming weeks. Talk a little bit about some of the
other obstacles with this in distributing the vaccine. I know
that some of the laws were changed there to allow
student doctors and even dental workers to administer this, but

(03:55):
beyond that, the shot is so tricky to administer because,
as we mentioned, some of these subzero temperatures that it
needs to be kept in, and they're not in ready
made shots, they're in bigger vials. So some of the
people administering the shots are saying, you know, it's a
little trickier than usual. Absolutely, it's not just subzero temperatures.
We describe them today as sub arctic and minus ninety

(04:16):
four degrees fahrenheit is the temperature which this vaccine can
survive for six months. If you take it out of
that and thow it it can survive for five days
at a normal kind of refrigerated temperature between two and
eight degrees but beyond that any warmer than that and
you've just got two hours before it becomes un viable.

(04:37):
So it's being shipped across from Belgium where it's produced
in these huge kind of nine seventy five does packets,
and as soon as you crack those open, that kind
of begins the process of thawing, and you have to
use them all at once. So that's the challenge faced
by smaller particularly nursing home providers, who are desperate to

(04:59):
get this fact seeking out to their residents. But the
challenge with this particular vaccine, which has to be kept
in such specific conditions is that there are logistical challenges
which still have to be overcome to get it into
these smaller providers, and that's what the National Health Service,
which is distributing the vaccine across the UK, is trying
to overcome at the moment and work out how it

(05:22):
does that safely and so that vaccine isn't wasted. I
think that's where they're also opening a lot of hope
on the astroslica vaccine, which can be kept at more
normal temperatures and a lot cheaper. The Visor vaccine is
one of the big ones. It has an efficacy rate
of after the two doses. They say the protection starts
after about ten days, so I mean it's a very

(05:43):
effective vaccine against COVID nineteen. And you know, it's just
kind of the rollout is difficult. Right in the United States,
were prioritizing people in nursing homes and healthcare workers. I
know it's very similar there in the UK as well.
So the government Scientific Advisory Group has developed a kind
of roster of who should get it first, and it

(06:04):
does have care home residents at the top, but unfortunately
at the moment that just doesn't seem to be practical
in this initial way. If they're very much hoping that
by Christmas they will have established a way of getting
these vaccines to people who can't get to a hospital
which has a huge ultra low temperature freezer, but they're

(06:26):
not there yet and that's the challenge. Well, the best
of luck in the roll out there. I know this
vaccine is desperately needed across the world, and we'll keep
an eye out. As I said it, all eyes are
on the UK right now to see how it's going.
Joanna Sudden, an assistant editor at The Wall Street Journal
based in London. Thank you very much for joining us,

(06:46):
Thanks for having me. I'm mascar Ramires and this has
been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories,
you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast
every Monday through Friday. So follow us on I Heart
Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.