“NHS staff no longer top priority to receive coronavirus vaccine” (Report, 3 December). This is because the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) advises that the first priority should be prevention of mortality, and to do this they have opted for immediate protection of very vulnerable, elderly people in care homes, rather than general prevention of mortality by using the vaccine to reduce the reproduction rate (R-number) of the virus.
JCVI did model the use of the vaccine to interrupt transmission of the virus in society, but decided this would only take place when a majority of the general population had been vaccinated, which would take many months to come about. It appears that they did not model giving the vaccine to potential super-spreaders, to people who encounter scores or even hundreds of other people during the course of their working day – people like doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers, teachers, police officers, shop workers, delivery drivers and many other groups who keep the real economy running. The key point is that these workers are at increased risk both of contracting and transmitting the disease.
If the government chose to vaccinate these public-facing workers, they would not only be reducing the R-number, they would also be assuaging the concerns of those on the right who argue that the “cure is worse than the disease”. This lobby has a real influence on people’s behaviour in terms of non-compliance with the rules and guidelines.
It is not too late even now for the government to allow NHS staff and other frontline workers to be vaccinated against the disease that poses such a threat to their work, their lives and the economy.
Dr Richard Lawson
Churchill, North Somerset
• I was delighted to read about the start of the UK’s vaccination campaign against Covid-19 (UK woman becomes first in world to receive Pfizer jab, 8 December). But the “first” people to receive any of the Covid-19 vaccines were of course the thousands of volunteers who took part in phase 1, 2 and 3 trials around the world.
Margaret Keenan’s vaccination in Coventry is a hugely important milestone. Nonetheless, the selflessness of clinical trial volunteers means that nobody receiving these vaccines under programmatic conditions in the UK is a “guinea pig”. It is important to draw this distinction, given the high rates of vaccine hesitancy in the UK.
Dr Hugh Adler
Liverpool
• We agree that ensuring fair distribution of the vaccine is the right thing to do to help end this pandemic for everyone (Editorial, 3 December). Covax brings countries together to work in collaboration – which is necessary but, on its own, is not sufficient. Covax will always struggle to find enough doses to purchase because pharmaceutical companies are unwilling to lift their patents and share their technology. Without this sharing, there just won’t be enough manufacturers to produce the quantity of doses needed globally.
Governments, including the UK’s, should step in. Countries are meeting this Thursday at the World Trade Organization to discuss a proposal to suspend Covid-19 patents during the pandemic to ensure all countries have a fair shot at accessing the health products they need.
There will never be enough doses for Covax to buy if countries don’t back the pooling of technology, know-how and intellectual property to maximise the production of enough vaccine doses in the first place.
Heidi Chow Global Justice Now, Rhiannon Osborne Students for Global Health, Poppy Hosford Universities Allied for Essential Medicines
