The plan to begin mass vaccination in early December 2020 will bring much needed hope for Christmas and the New Year. Pfizer/BioNTech has now received authorisation in the UK for the first COVID-19 vaccine produced in the western world. Moderna is likely to be next. It is a truly remarkable achievement that the pharma industry has transformed its drug discovery and development to launch vaccines in less than 12 months and deliver headline efficacy rates of circa 95%.
However, market authorisation is simply one leg in a relay race. The next stage will be managing the wave of information requests and safety reports that must be expected as part of the imminent COVID-19 mass vaccination campaigns.
Scale of the task at hand
Reports suggest that countries such as the USA and UK are aiming for 70% of their populations to be immunised by May 2021. That equates to ~47million people in the UK...
