Tuesday, 5 January 2021

Vaccine Olympics?

It is clear that different countries are performing in variable ways in attempts to roll out vaccinations for Covid-19 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/05/covid-vaccinations-slow-start-around-world-dose-reality). A common feature is that politicians talk up the likely 'speed' of 'their' programmes, without having a clear understanding of the technical difficulties surrounding such exercises. There have been problems with the packaging of vaccines (e.g. shortages of vials) and availability of syringes. There have been problems with finding medical people available and competent to administer the jabs. There have been problems in even finding out, for certain, what some countries have been doing. There have been problems associated with the bureaucracies needed to record injections (often taking longer than the vaccination itself) as well as to approve the use of particular vaccines (and batches of vaccine, as they come off the production line). There have been problems associated with the fact that different countries have different priority groups (e.g. Indonesia is to vaccinate working-age folk, before getting round to the elderly). There has even been wastage of vaccine (refrigeration issues) and at least one case of sabotage (in the US). In France (one of the most vaccine-averse nations), it has been reported that the 'mass' programme has only delivered slightly more than 500 injections, in spite of the country having millions of doses of vaccine available. It's not exactly citius (faster), altius (higher) and fortius (stronger). I suspect that vaccination is going to be a slow process in many parts of the world.

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