The first coronavirus vaccines have arrived in the UK and inoculations are due to begin on Tuesday.
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said it will be “a marathon, it’s not a sprint”, telling BBC Breakfast: “We’re looking forward to the race starting on Tuesday.”
The government has ordered 800,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, with the bulk of the rollout taking place in 2021. The Oxford/AstraZeneca version will boost supplies in the new year with an order of 100m already placed.
Business secretary Alok Sharma told BBC Breakfast: “Well, some are in the UK, but as we said the programme will start next week, and I think I’m confident that we will have all of those available from the start of the programme.
“People should feel confident about this vaccine. The MHRA is regarded as the gold standard of regulators around the world by scientists.”
Splitting batches
This week the MHRA said the batches could be split into smaller numbers of doses in “certain conditions.” The boxes contain 975 doses, which had meant some could be wasted if sent to individual residential homes, but they can now be safely divided.
Dr Ian Levy, technical director at the National Cyber Security Centre, said his organisation was working to ensure vaccine delivery was as “protected as can be” from cyber attacks.
Asked about reports of hackers targeting the international vaccine “cold chain”, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “In April we pivoted our work to better protect the health sector and so there is a massive community effort in protecting the health sector and the vaccine supply chain, all the way from research, through to delivery and distribution.
“That threat has changed during the course of the pandemic and the community has evolved its defences to try and make sure we are protected as we can be.
“We work alongside our allies, we’re committed to protecting the most sensitive and critical assets in the health sector and the crucial vaccine.”
He said the threat had “probably stayed about the same” but declined to say which states had been targeting vaccine efforts, with reports suggesting North Korea had been involved.
Dr Levy added: “Lots of people are interested in vaccines and I don’t think it is necessary to go into details of who may or may not be doing it.
“We don’t normally give operational updates – you’re talking about public attribution of cyber attacks. That’s a matter for government rather than any individual agency.”
Priority rankings
Professor Azra Ghani, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Imperial College London, said priority for which groups should be in line for a vaccine jab could change during the rollout.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about her modelling of vaccine prioritisation, she said giving jabs first to the “most vulnerable”, such as the oldest in society, was a way of reducing illness as clinical trials had shown the vaccines currently developed “reduce illness and particularly severe illness and hospitalisation”.
But how the priority ranking works further down the line will depend on the stage of the epidemic, she added.
Prof Ghani said: “Once we go below the age of 50, then the risk of severe outcomes really does drop off quite dramatically.
“Then, I think, we need to think about what stage the epidemic is in, what the supply looks like and what the priorities are.
“So, risk groups may be one of those but if the epidemic has started to decline – we may have moved into the summer period – it may be that we want to protect key industries.