Major Moves with COVID-19 Vaccines

The Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine has been approved for use by the MHRA, the U.K. medicines regulator – the first such move globally.

The first 800,000 doses may become available in Britain in the next few days to those at the top of the priority list, i.e. elderly people in care homes and care home staff as well as those over 80 and health and care staff. Overall, the UK has ordered 40m doses of the vaccine, which is produced at Pfizer’s facilities in Belgium.

Since the vaccine requires specific storage conditions (it must be kept at -70C), it will be transported in special boxes of up to 5,000 doses, packed in dry ice. Also, most likely the first vaccinations will be taking place at hospitals where such storage facilities are available. This means that care home staff, NHS staff and patients will be the first to be inoculated. The vaccine will be free and the vaccination will not be compulsory.

The Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine was the first to publish positive early results from final stages of clinical trials. An mRNA vaccine has never been approved for use in humans before, and the development took the companies only 10 months.