The few, the proud, the vaccinated?
Here in the United States, we’re still working almost entirely with two vaccines thus far. One is from Pfizer and the other from Moderna. But as of today, the folks in the UK will have a new vaccine option. This one was developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca and it supposedly has a couple of advantages. The chief among these is that the vaccine can be stored at more manageable temperatures than the Pfizer product, which basically needs to be kept at sub-zero temperatures. But as this AP report indicates, the way they will be distributing and administering this new vaccine seems questionable to some in the medical community. Britain on Wednesday authorized emergency use of a second COVID-19 vaccine, becoming the first country to greenlight an easy-to-handle shot that its developers hope will become the “vaccine for the world.” The Department of Health said it had accepted a recommendation from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency to authorize the vaccine developed by Oxford University and U.K.-based drugmaker AstraZeneca. Britain has bought 100 million doses of the vaccine, and plans to begin injections within days.
