MASSIVE COVID RANT

It has taken me almost to the end of the year to become fully frustrated with the Covid situation. I can understand that it is unprecedented times but it does not defend incompetence. Before I get bombarded with political comments I am not defending or attacking the present government in a political sense. What I am attacking is an urgency in resolving the issues.

The vaccination roll-out has been woeful at best. According to “Our World Data” as of the 16th December, the UK has only vaccinated 137,897 people since the first vaccination on 6th December. That equates to 13,790 per day based on a 7-day week. As we have to vaccinate the UK population of 66.65 million twice, equating to 133,300,000 vaccinations, it will take us 9,666 days (26.5 years) to complete the task at the current rate. I know that sounds crazy but those are the performance figures at the moment. I fully understand that this is early days regarding the vaccination program but the government has had the last 9 months to organise and prepare a suitable program.

My feelings are that the vaccination program should be run like a military exercise and therefore why not let the Army run it as one. They can co-ordinate with our other services i.e., Airforce, Navy, NHS, and other volunteers. Field tents could be set up in the car parks of the 14,733 supermarkets that are based in the UK, and in addition they could also utilise the existing (500 sites) Covid testing stations. This gives us over 15,233 potential vaccination sites.

If you run the vaccination process similar to a production line.

1.      Give Name, address and NI number is can be logged and validated against the National Database.

2.      Move down the line to nurse/trained personnel to give the vaccination.

3.      Move down the line to receive a printed vaccination card.

If you base the process on 1 vaccination process to take 4 minutes maximum you are looking at completing 15 per hour per station. With 15,233 station x 15 vaccinations per hour and a 10-hour day = 3.4 million vaccinations per day. This equates to completely vaccinating the UK public twice (1st vaccination & 2nd booster) within 39 days.

This will throw up a couple of questions I am sure: -

1.      Will the supermarkets be able to cope with field stations on their sites? To give you a feeling for the number of visits we make to the supermarket per week. On average in the UK, we do 1.6 visits per week. On average we make 106.64 million visits per week. Providing there was sufficient staff and vaccines available, we could vaccinate the whole of the UK within 2 weeks at your convenience whilst popping into the supermarket.

2.      We have limited vaccines which I can understand as demand is an international issue. However, that does not stop us vaccinating the supplies that we have quickly.

3.      We have to vaccinate the vulnerable first and therefore managing the roll-out takes time to manage. Do we have to vaccinate the vulnerable first? I question this on 2 grounds. First the bureaucracy of choosing who needs it and when is taking up too much time. Is it not better to just get on with it? The quicker we get each individual vaccinated the lower the chances of the virus spreading which in turn reduces the risk to the vulnerable. The second thought is that should it be given to those more likely to come into contact with others likely to be transmitting the virus i.e., the younger generation. Again, surely this will reduce the infection rate and therefore indirectly protect the vulnerable. These 2 points are poised only as a comment and not as a solution.

On a separate issue I cannot believe that the lateral flow rapid testing has not universally been rolled out. These should have been sent out in the post to every household in the country to test simultaneously. Although it has its limitations and there have been numerous false positive results reported, in Liverpool it did identify 842 patients that tested positive out of 96,000 that were asymptomatic. This was a significant result that as Prof. Calum Semple from Liverpool University stated, “the transmission chains had been broken during the Liverpool pilot scheme”. This made people aware that they were positive without symptoms and could therefore socially isolate preventing further spreading of the virus.

In conclusion what I am trying to say is stop mucking about with bureaucracy and get the vaccination process going in a meaningful way. Combine that with a testing regime that is proactive and not reactive I am sure we can get the situation under control in a timely manner.

Rant over, have a lovely Christmas!