London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Sep 18, 2025

As first Pfizer vaccine doses arrive in U.K., officials tell doctors and nurses they won’t get priority

As first Pfizer vaccine doses arrive in U.K., officials tell doctors and nurses they won’t get priority

The first doses of the newly approved coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer arrived in Britain on Thursday night, the shipment packed in dry ice and traveling by truck from the company’s manufacturing plant in Belgium through the Eurotunnel to England.
Yet excitement over next week’s planned launch of a mass immunization program was tempered Friday by frustration over a late decision to exclude front line health workers from the first round — though many had already booked appointments.

Priority will go to people over 80 years old and to nursing home caregivers, and public health officials conceded that, even for those groups, demand could quickly outstrip supply in the early months. The 800,000 doses Britain expects to get this month “could be the only batch we receive for some time,” warned Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers.

Britain will be the first country to confront the challenges of rolling out a vaccine that uses revolutionary technology and requires extremely careful handling.

The United States isn’t far behind in its approval decision, and experience here could inform U.S. efforts — though the United Kingdom’s universal health-care system allows a more centralized approach.

The chief operations officer for Operation Warp Speed, Army Gen. Gustave Perna, told reporters this week the federal government plans to distribute 6.4 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine to states within 24 hours after an expected emergency-use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration.

While the United States, like Britain, may need time to ramp up, the White House vaccine team predicted 100 million Americans could be immunized by the end of February.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel on Tuesday voted to recommend prioritizing residents of long-term care homes and health-care workers. That’s in keeping with the priority lists in many countries around the world. But Britain shocked its National Health Service medical workers Thursday evening by revealing that, contrary to long-held assumptions, they would not be among the first to get an injection.

Frontline nurses and doctors have been regularly hailed as national heroes in Britain. In the early months of the cresting pandemic, citizens filled the streets banging pots and pans, blowing horns and clapping in weekly displays of appreciation for their courage.

But now, along with much of the country, they will be expected to wait.

Mike Adams, director for England at the Royal College of Nursing, said that in the past few weeks, “messaging from politicians has been focused on ‘the NHS staff will get it,’ and so some of the narrative from politicians has been unhelpful in raising expectations.”

Adams told The Washington Post, “We want to see our members have access to it for their own safety and to prevent further outbreaks in the areas they are working, but we appreciate that with limited supply of vaccine, you understand why the most vulnerable are being prioritized. But the confusion is the most unhelpful part.”

Rachel Luby is nurse specializing in mental health at NHS in London. “For me the issue is not that those aged over 80 having the vaccination before I do. I have seen first hand, in my grandmother, how loss of routine and activity has impacted her, and she has gone from an active, healthy woman to someone who is now quite frail,” Luby said, adding that it is also smart to form a “protective ring” around nursing homes by vaccinating care givers there.

Luby said, “What does affect me is the message from the government, time and again, that they simply do not care about the lives of those who work in the NHS. They ‘clapped for us and then they slapped us’ is the way that I and many frontline colleagues feel.”

She said, “I feel for those staff who had got their hopes up that they would be getting 'the tools to do their job,’ because I do see the vaccine as being akin to that,” a tool to do the job.

Instead of ICU nurses, ventilator specialists and emergency room physicians, NHS officials and vaccine task force members said they wanted to prioritize the elderly and nursing home caregivers — because the highest mortality and the largest number of hospitalizations have come from that age group and sector.

Unfortunately, however, NHS officials conceded they do not yet have a protocol nor approval from drug regulators to offer Pfizer injections within nursing homes.

The vaccine, developed by the German company BioNTech and manufactured by Pfizer, is built on tiny bits of messenger RNA, which encourage the body to produce antibodies to repel the spike protein on the surface of the coronavirus. RNA vaccines need to be stored and shipped at seriously cold, sub-Antarctic temperatures of minus 75 Celsius, and so they require special handling.

British regulators, in granting emergency approval for the Pfizer vaccine, said it cannot be moved more than four times and that the trays of 975 doses cannot be split apart — and nursing homes are typically smaller than that.

“It’s not like taking a six pack of yogurt out of your home fridge, breaking it up on the kitchen work top, putting one in your bag, taking it to work and then storing it in the work fridge,” Hopson said.

So, while the NHS figures out how to get into nursing homes with this or another vaccine, the first jabs will be injected at one of the 50 hospitals serving an immunization hubs. Next year, the government plans to open mass immunization centers in conference centers, sport arenas, and schools.

Overall, Britain has ordered 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, enough to vaccinate 20 million people, as each requires two shots, three weeks apart.

Business minister Alok Sharma told Sky News on Friday that he hoped the country would get “some millions” of doses from Pfizer this month, “but, of course, what we also always said is that the vast majority of this vaccination program will take place in the new year.”

The initial 800,000 doses promised from Pfizer won’t go far to cover the 3.2 million Brits aged 80 and above and the at least 300,000 caregivers working in nursing homes.

All of those people will be in line before the more than 1.4 million NHS workers.

Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the British Medical Association, the main doctors union, said that with limited supplies, it was important that those deemed most at risk were prioritized, but he criticized the government’s inconsistent messaging.

“During the first wave, we saw far too many health- and social-care workers become incredibly sick with covid — with many tragically dying — and therefore those working on the front line need to be given the opportunity to get protected early,” Nagpaul said.

“It’s crucial now that there’s absolute consistency and clarity, as more vaccines become available, for both the public and health care staff about when and where they can expect to be vaccinated,” he said.

Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said the deployment will be a “big challenge,” but added that U.K. hospitals and labs were well equipped for handling samples that need low temperatures, including using liquid nitrogen and dry ice.

He said if the aim is to reduce the death toll, it made sense to prioritize nursing homes, which were hit “really badly” in the first wave.

After that, he said, the next on the list could be health care workers, “not only because they’re more at risk themselves, but they care for a lot of the people in the extremely vulnerable older age group.”

This is also important if there isn’t widespread uptake in those over 80 years old.

“If you target the upper 80s, and if they don’t take it up like you hoped, then the next best thing is to vaccinate people who come into close contact with them, which will be the health-care workers.”
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Trump: Cancel quarterly company reports and settle for reporting once every six months
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
US Launches New Pilot Program to Accelerate eVTOL Air Taxi Deployment
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Hong Kong Industry Group Calls for HK$20 Billion Support Fund to Ease Property Market Stress
Joe Biden’s Post-Presidency Speaking Fees Face Weak Demand amid Corporate Reluctance
Charlie Kirk's murder will break the left's hateful cancel tactics
Kash Patel erupts at ‘buffoon’ Sen. Adam Schiff over Russiagate: ‘You are the biggest fraud’
Homeland Security says Emmy speech ‘fanning the flames of hatred’ after Einbinder’s ‘F— ICE’ remark
Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty as Charges Formally Announced
Actor, director, environmentalist Robert Redford dies at 89
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
JD Vance Says There Is “No Unity” with Those Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Killing, and he is right!
Trump sues the 'New York Times' for an astronomical sum of 15 billion dollars
Florida Hospital Welcomes Its Largest-Ever Baby: Annan, Nearly Fourteen Pounds at Birth
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
USA: Office Depot Employees Refused to Print Poster in Memory of Charlie Kirk – and Were Fired
Proposed U.S. Bill Would Allow Civil Suits Against Judges Who Release Repeat Violent Offenders
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
French Debt Downgrade Piles Pressure on Macron’s New Prime Minister
US and UK Near Tech, Nuclear and Whisky Deals Ahead of Trump Trip
One in Three Europeans Now Uses TikTok, According to the Chinese Tech Giant
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
NATO Deploys ‘Eastern Sentry’ After Russian Drones Violate Polish Airspace
Anesthesiologist Left Operation Mid-Surgery to Have Sex with Nurse
Tens of Thousands of Young Chinese Get Up Every Morning and Go to Work Where They Do Nothing
×