As the first doses of the newly approved coronavirus vaccine reach locations across the UK, the government has revealed more about how and when they are given.
The UK was the first Western country to allow a vaccine opposed to Covid, paving the way for mass vaccination for those at highest threat in phase one.
In a statement, the Department of Health said a number of operational and logistical steps must be taken before the $40 million doses it had purchased can begin to be presented to the public.
The challenges revolve around the desire to keep the vaccine at -70 degrees Celsius while splitting the packaging and transporting it to places where it can be administered to those who most want it, such as residents of a nursing home.
So far, Pfizer has sent “initial volumes” of vaccines from Belgium that have reached locations in the UK.
Vaccines should then be monitored in temperature to ensure that they have not been interrupted during shipment, a procedure that takes 12 to 24 hours.
In the following days, each box will have to be opened and unpacked manually, and the knowledge of the temperature must be discharged from each box.
Each vaccine pack contains five boxes with 975 doses consistent with the box and can only be divided into sites with an MHRA drug regulator license.
Once all verifications are completed, the vaccine will be available for order through NHS legal sites, with around 50 sites in England to date and more than 1,000 general vaccination centers.
Since it will have to be stored at very incruse temperatures and moved carefully, it will first be administered from “hospitals”.
Defrosting the vaccine takes a few hours, then more time is needed to prepare before other people get the vaccine.
As a component of mass deployment, more than 1,000 local immunization centers, run by teams of GPS, will also be online, where the vaccine can be stored in medical refrigerators for five days.
Once vaccines arrive, there will be larger vaccination centers and smaller arrangements in pharmacies.
Thousands of additional volunteers are being recruited in Norfolk and Waveney to create a massive team to deliver the Covid-19 vaccine with more people needed to kick and volunteer at the quarterbacks’ delivery sites.
The phase one precedence list includes others in nursing homes and their frontline caregivers and fitness workers.
People will have two blows, three weeks apart.