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Positive vaccine sentiment in Britain rises to a high of 94%, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This shows that the UK vaccination drive is not only working but has amazing public support, more than anywhere else in the world.

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Angela Merkel of Germany and other EU leaders decided to back "global supply chains" and declined to support the EU Commission in Brussels at a virtual summit attended by 27 leaders of the EU states. It was also attended briefly by Joe Biden. Ursula von Leyen said 21 million doses of vaccine had been shipped from EU to Britain, of which 1 million were from Astra Zeneca and the rest from Pfizer and other makers of vaccines. A total of 77 million doses made in the EU wer shipped to 33 countries since 1 December 2020. Governments of Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium and Sweden were not in favor of blocking shipments from the UK because of the effect on supply chains. Pfizer is strongly opposed to the move to block shipments. Merkel emphasized the need to respect the global supply chains while making efforts to ensure EU countries get a fair share of vaccine supplies. The problems of UK vs Britain on vaccine supplies comes from the yield problems at a Belgium plant of Astra Zeneca and the company's refusal to divert supplies from the UK. Of the 120 million promised only 30 million could be delivered to EU. The UK's contract with Astra Zeneca states that supplies from its plants in Oxford and Staffordshire must be delivered to Britain first. The UK is facing an acute shortage of second doses even though it has given 31 million jabs. At this time 45 out of 100 people in the UK have jabs, compared with 13 out of 100 in the EU.   ...

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The problem facing Africa is whether vaccine supplies will run out before new vaccine supplies come from America, Britain and France. Only less than 1% of African people have been fully vaccinated out of a population of 1.3 billion people. US president Biden said America will provide 500 million doses of Pfizer vaccine to poor nations before the G-7 meeting in Cornwall, UK. Britain added 100 million and France 30 million doses. With new more transmissable variants out there Africa is in considerable danger today. The Delta variant from India has been shown to be about 70% more contagious than the Alpha variant from Kent UK. It is already the dominant variant for new cases in the UK. The new variants are now spreading in Africa. Cities such as Johannesburg, South Africa, and Kampala, Uganda are seeing a surge in cases. Another problem in Africa is that governments are increasingly reluctant to impose strong lockdowns because of the economy. Already it is believed that Africa's middle class has been severely affected during the last 18 months. ...

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The new tiered system of tighter restrictions passed in the British parliament 291 to 78 with 51 Tory rebels voting against and 10 Tories abstaining. Labour abstained from the vote getting it to pass. Tory rebels are voting with their constituents in Tory seats in parliament that have lower rate from coronavirus and see the restrictions hurting the lives of people in their areas. The prime minister had to make a special plea to them to get it passed including promising to review in granular detail these areas which needed lifting restrictions because of low infection rates.

Other steps the government is taking are to seek emergency approval of vaccines with the first approval done for Pfizer vaccine. This means Britain will be the first country to start vaccinations in 24-48 hours- December 3 or December 4.

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Two health service workers at NHS Britain experienced symptoms after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. NHS is told by medicines regulator that people with a history of significant allergic reactions should not be given the Pfizer vaccine.

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The Oxford vaccine manufactured and distributed by Astra Zeneca faced manufacturing problems in 2020. The company is fixing these manufacturing problems and plans to meet demand from Britain, the European Union, and the rest of the world. It plans to double vaccine monthly production to 200 million doses monthly by April. CEO Pascal Soriot says "Is it perfect? No, it's not perfect, but it's great, and tell me who else is making 100 million doses in February?" The Oxford vaccine has shown strong protection against severe coronavirus symptoms and is important in the fight against the pandemic. To tackle variants of the coronavirus the company plans to have another jab developed by autumn this year.

Britain and India are depending on Oxford vaccine to vaccinate large parts of the population. India has a second vaccine developed by Indian scientists at Bharat Biotech that is also in use.

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Vaccine passports are seen as discriminatory in Britain and by Boris Johnson. The goal is to get the entire population vaccinated. To have vaccine passports when only some segments of society are vaccinated creates a two tier society, it is felt.

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A 2011 film "Contagion" with Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude West, showed vaccine supplies so inadequate in a pandemic that the limited supply had to be given out in lottery system.

This idea of prioritization stuck in the minds of planners in Britain including Health minister Matt Hancock. The idea of prioritization after the vaccine was manufactured and distributed caused British health authorites to seek the advice of Britain's best health scientists and clinicians. Hancock says "we ask the clinicians and we do it on the basis of how we can save the most lives most quickly." Britain concentrated on ensuring the most supplies to vaccinate every British citizen with two doses very early during the time when the vaccine was being developed.

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Moderna, J&J, Pfizer in the U.S., Sanofi in France, AstraZeneca in Britain, have accelerated their efforts to have a vaccine ready by the fall.  Moderna and Pfizer use new technologies. Astra Zeneca is working with Oxford University on a vaccine that builds on existing technologies. Both AstraZeneca and Sanofi are building capacity to make hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine. 

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Dr. Andrew Pollard and the invention of Covishield vaccine at Oxford University in Britain in 12 months, that has saved the world, with 2.6 billion doses given. It is in its final act says this report in The Guardian with 3 billion doses to go for the 3 billion people in the world that have not received a dose. Billions of people in India, other Asian countries, Latin America and Africa depend on this vaccine during this pandemic.

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Everyone over 50 years is to be given the vaccine in just a few months of 2021 by the NHS. A massive logistics and training effort is underway. The government changed the law to let student doctors, physiotherapists, and dental workers to give the vaccine. Retired doctors and nurses are called in. Britain has a war effort to counter antivaccine propaganda unlike other countries such as France and Germany. Compare that 79% of Britons are seeking the vaccine, 54% in France and 64% in the U.S. showing that the UK is doing a much better job. Vaccination starts next week for over 80 year old people. The world is watching.

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How is it that Britain's regulatory agency approved the Pfizer vaccine before the U.S. FDA agency? This report in the NYT says FDA looks at the raw data. Britain's Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency looks at the information provided by the company. It still does the testing batch by batch and has access to the data and looks at thousands of pages of data. What about the European Union? The European Union Medicines Agency meets on December 29. It takes days after it meets to get input of 27 countries so that vaccination cannot start till January. The U.S. president summoned the FDA to the White House to find out how soon the FDA could act. Both Britain and the U.S. are feeling the impact of the second wave of coronavirus.

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The US received a boost in the economy with larger public spending than the European Union countries and more spending on vaccines. This is changing quickly as the EU has secured a large order of vaccines from Pfizer and other companies. France and Germany are now making steady progress in their vaccination drives. Britain has already secured results in the NHS vaccination drive, a leader in the field.

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The chief scientific adviser to the government of Britain says "go hard, and go early" to prevent a surge of coronavirus in Britain in the autumn and winter with more activity indoors. Things are flattish at the moment, but if hospitalizations pick up the government needs to quickly shift from Plan A without vaccine mandate and without mandatory mask use to requiring vaccinations and mask use, calling for working from home, as part of Plan B. Unlike France and other countries in Europe Britain has not taken the strong action that is necessary. Prime minister Boris Johnson is pushing for new efforts in getting the remaining people vaccinated.

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The vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India with research at Oxford University in Britain will cost about Rs 1000 or $13, and it will be called Covishield. It is expected by November 2020 with 1 billion doses of production planned.

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 Edward Jenner invented the small pox vaccine in 1796. Before this a method called variolation was used. Pieces of fabric or threads moistened with a sick person's small pox postules were pulled through incisions in a person's arm. This was effective until Edward Jenner invented the vaccine itself for mass vaccination efforts. Tom Parfitt of The Times writes about how Catherine Empress of Russia invited Dr Dimsdale from Britain to give her the inoculation against smallpox. She became the first person to be inoculated in Russia and had the courage to do so after this method had been tried and successfully tested in Britain. Catherine writes in this letter to Count Rumyantsev that she had only mild discomfort. She then championed smallpox inoculation for the Russian people and says "it does not call for huge expenditure." Today the Russian government is making its best efforts to vaccinate the Russian people, yet only 38% are fully vaccinated. The example of a medical revolution 200 years ago and how it was handled in Europe is new inspiration for renewed efforts. ...

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The story of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine is the story of 2 chikdren of Turkish immigrants to Germany. Sahin the son of a engineer working at a Ford factory in Cologne, and Tureci the daughter of a surgeon working at a hospital in Mainz Germany. Sahin was born in 1965 on the Mediterranean coast in Iskerundun, Turkey and he went to Germany when he was 4 years old, his father being recruited in a new effort to rebuild Germany with foreign labour. Both are motivated by scientific research and the drive to come up with some method to tackle cancer for patients with new research and cures.  Both did their doctoral dissertation on experimental therapies at the Johannes-Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany, and both joined the faculty there. Sahin spent years studying the mRNA , genetic instructions that can be delivered to the body to help it defend itself against viruses and other threats. Much of this mRNA research was already at an advanced stage in January 2020 when Sahin heard about the coronavirus in China. At that point he saw the potential of retargeting the mRNA research to tackling the coronavirus. By this time he already had his own company with over 200 million euros invested in it  by investors including Helmut Jeggle, now supervisory board chairman of BioNTech. This report says he sat down one Saturday, January 25, 2020 and working on his computer designed the template for 10 possible coronavirus vaccines, one of which would become BNT162b2, the vaccine now approved in Britain. On the same day he told a surprised Jettle that he would refocus the company on the new virus that had not yet hit Europe. Shain he says cited the Hong Kong flu that claimed 4 million lives. Why Pfizer. Pfizer had already been working with BioNTech on a new flu vaccine based on mRNA technology. A cooperation deal was signed with Pfizer in March for organizing clinical trials, manufacture globally, and distribute the vaccine. BioNTech then acquired a U.S. company and a German pharmaceutical factory in Germany. ...

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Italy faces tighter restrictions and a national lockdown at Easter for the coronavirus, Italians who were the first to go into lockdown on March 10, 2020, now think they will be the last to exit lockdowns. The mood in Europe is of frustration with the slow vaccination drive and the failure to procure enough vaccine supplies and to approve vaccines in time. The US and Britain have vaccination drives that are moving rapidly leading to a reduction in cases and deaths. In Europe new cases are rising since mid February 2021, and there is the spread of the new variant first detected in the UK.  The variants make up 70% of new cases in France says Health Minister Olivier Veran. ICU's in France are 80% full. Elections in France in 2022 and in Germany in September 2021 are leading to government reluctance to impose tighter restrictions. The government strategy is now being questioned. Only 30% of Germans now have confidence in chancellor Merkel's ability to make competent decisions. The CDU's partner in the government, the SDU socialists have even less trust with SDU getting less than 10%. There are signs of a third wave of coronavirus in Germany resulting from variants of the virus, slow vaccinations, and reopenings. ...

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Discussions at the cabinet level and with prime minister Johnson now include the possible use of annual covid jabs, the importance of getting the vaccine out before a new mutant strain of the virus that is hard to deal with a year from now. An annual covid jab could deal with new mutant strains of the virus. 

Prime minister Johnson is also having to deal with the issue of letting people in from overseas. If Britain's vaccination drive succeeds it will be all the more important to protect Britain from new mutant strains arriving with people coming from overseas. This will require strict control of people coming from other countries including Europe. The question of closing the borders to to reduce risks is now a serious one.

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The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are effective against the virus variant identified in Britain. It is less effective against the virus variant from South Africa. The U.S. banned all travel to and from South Africa effective Jan 30. U.S. coronavirus cases were at 125,000 on Jan 24 down 20% for the week. 

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The extraordinary story of Nadhim Zahawi who came to the UK as a child fleeing Iraq in the seventies with his parents. His grandfather was the governor of the Central Bank of Iraq. He says he survived by coming to Britain as he might have been killed in the Iran- Iraq war of the 1980's. He started life in Sussex and studied at the University College of London. In 2018 he was made Education minister by Theresa May. He continued under Boris Johnson as Education Minister, and in 2020 took the position of Vaccine Rollout minister.In July 2022 he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer to replace Rishi Sunak.

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In his farewell speech Boris Johnson, with true British resilient spirit,  says "I will be giving fervent support to Liz Truss and her government every step of the way." Johnson likened his transfer of power to Ms Truss to a relay race. "The baton will be handed over," saying it "unexpectedly turned into a relay race, they changed the rules halfway through." But he expressed no feelings of regret, having come to terms with the arrangement in his own way. More likely Johnson is without saying it still determining the policies and direction of the government, perhaps more so now with Liz Truss and his loyalists the only persons in the cabinet and running the British government. Johnson addressed people's fears about the energy price increases- "the UK would continue to have the strength to give people cash they need to get through this energy crisis that is caused by Putin's vicious war."  He listed his government's achievements- the response to Covid. Some of this is forgotten as the UK not the EU leadership was first to move forward with vaccination plans. Johnson put his government's faith in the vaccine invented at Oxford University and committed early while the EU languished under Merkel and her protege Ursula Von der Leyen. The EU fell behind in providing vaccine leadership as Britain forged ahead early, giving hope to the rest of the world's population including India that adopted the Oxford vaccine. Johnson likened his role to the missions to the planets- "Let me say I am now like one of those booster rockets that has fulfilled its function and I will be re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down invisibly into some remote and obscure corner of the Pacific." Johnson has taken the situation in a truly British way without any rancor and gracefully. With Liz Truss in charge he even gets a break after the difficult period handling the once in a century pandemic, handing over to a younger member of his group, and yet deciding on many of the policies and guiding the government for the term it was elected for to 2024. History will look at him favorably for his handling of the pandemic and vaccination, and for his instincts about the Ukraine war and Britain's unwavering support, and now in guiding Truss to provide Britain with strong support for the cost of living crisis caused by the war. His failings stem partly from his exuberance and optimistic spirit, but nowhere near detract from these achievements. ...

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The World Vaccine Summit raises about $7 billion to immunize about 300 million children for polio, diphtheria and measles, over 5 years. Prime minister Boris Johnson who opened the summit called it "the greatest shared endeavour of our times." Bill Gates donated $1.6 billion and Britain pledged 1.65 billion pounds over 5 years, making Britain the largest donor. Mr. Trump also addressed the summit in virtual manner- "we will work hard, we will work strong... good luck, let's get the answer." Mr. Johnson called for renewing "the collective resolve."  Specifically he stated: " Just as we have great military alliances like NATO.... where countries collaborate on building their collective military defence, so we now need that sam spirit of collaboration and collective defense agains the common enemy of disease." Referring to failure of early warning systems for coronavirus with crucial weeks between Jan 6 to Feb 16 lost for the West with lack of international cooperation- "It will require a new international effort to cooperate on the surveillance and sharing of information- data is king- that can underpin a global alert system, so we can rapidly identify any future outbreak. And that will mean a rapid scale-up of our global capacity to respond."  ...

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British prime minister Boris Johnson will visit India in January at the invitation of Indian prime minister Modi. It is the first bilateral visit of Mr. Johnson since taking office. Johnson says he really looks forward to the trip and delivering on the quantum leap to create jobs and growth for the two countries. He has invited Modi to the G7 Summit in London as a guest nation along with Australia and South Korea. Mr. Johnson will also host a climate change summit. This is the first visit to India by a British prime minister since John Major. Because of the historical relationship and the British Commonwealth of nations, and as leaders in the English speaking world, both countries have a lot in common. The parliamentary system India adopted comes from Britain. India's role in the Indian ocean as a maritime power alongside Britain and Australia also comes from the period when Britain was the preeminent maritime power in the world. Indian companies in UK have $41 billion pounds in sales and half a million British jobs come from Indian companies. India also is UK's biggest partner in pharmaceuticals, making 50% of the world's vaccines. ...

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Each year malaria kills 500,000 people mostly in Africa, including 260,000 children. A vaccine jab for malaria has finally been developed. It took 34 years for Dr. Ripley Ballou, 70 years, to refine the technology while working at GSK in Britain to get this done. Ballou himself had malaria and could experience its debilitating effect. This made him resolve to find a solution. The vaccine jab is the first for a parasite and the first developed from scratch for African children. Its effectiveness wanes over months so that its use is intended for the rainy season. By giving 3 shots just before the rainy season when malaria is at its peak it can reach 70% effectiveness, say British experts. It is cost effective as other prevention measures as nets over beds- it will cost about $2 -$10. When combined with other anti-malarial medicines it is about 90% effective. Its safety is proven after having given 2.3 million jabs of the vaccine in African countries. Experts estimate it will prevent 5.4 million cases of malaria, from Mali to Kenya, and from India to Indonesia where malaria is still a danger. Malaria can repeat itself many times for the same person over a lifetime, increasing the health risks and damage to health. The vaccine was developed using technology that produces a protein that is also found on the outside of the malaria parasites in the early stages of its lifecycle. It exposes the immune system of a person to this protein to build up immune defenses. This British discovery will help African  Asian, and Latin American countries build confidence in their health systems ability to cope with dangerous diseases. In doing this it will improve the quality of life and combined with other health actions provide a better life in the poorest countries.   ...