Tony Blair: We must get the vaccine rollout right

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair explains why he is backing our campaign to make Covid vaccinations available as quickly as possible

The pandemic is a challenge of monumental scale and requires a response to match. Our NHS staff have risen to this challenge heroically, saving lives and providing care on overstretched wards and leading the charge in a national vaccination effort on top of all their other responsibilities. As the virus mutates and the daily death toll escalates, we owe it to them to get the vaccine rollout right. It is our way out of this crisis.

There are two issues we must take head on: supply of vaccines and the capacity of the system to absorb and use them. The first is to a large degree outside of the government’s hands, but the second is literally a matter of organisation and logistics. The point is, with the right plan in place there should be no barrier to using all available supplies, without wastage, and from March when there will be millions more doses the system should be able to use them to maximum effect. It goes without saying that whatever is supplied should be out of the door immediately.

Supply consists of two vaccines types. First is RNA – such as Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccine – complicated to store and requiring a degree of expertise to administer. Second are those vaccines akin to a flu shot, developed by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson – it is these that will be the workhorses of our vaccine effort, deliverable at scale if we organise ourselves properly.

AstraZeneca is constrained by the production process but they’re ramping up fast. By the end of January there should be 2 million vaccines a week available. In February this could be pushed up further, and 3 million vaccines or more from then over time is possible - provided that amount can be absorbed. At the same time, we must do all we can to ready ourselves for the approval of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine which is expected in February. Every day matters and we must not repeat the delay of five days between approval and administering the first shot. Do this, and it’s not unrealistic that we’ll have a supply of five million vaccine doses a week in March.