LONDON – In Bristol, a sports stadium is being converted into a makeshift clinic to carry out vaccinations, as is a racetrack outside London. Village houses, libraries, and parking lots across the country are also rapidly becoming makeshift vaccination centers, with the government seeking advice from military planners.
As the UK prepares to begin rolling out a coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday, it is facing the greatest logistical challenge the country’s healthcare system has ever faced: vaccinating tens of millions of people against coronavirus in just a few months. At the same time, law enforcement agencies are grappling with a number of potential security threats to the vaccination campaign.
Healthcare retirees are being sought for help while the National Health Service recruits tens of thousands of first aid workers and other workers to administer the shot as the vaccine becomes more and more available.
“I think all people who can help should put their hands up,” said Sarah Wollaston, who worked as a doctor before serving in Parliament until recently. She has just completed part of an online refresher course to qualify for the vaccine launch.
“Physically, it’s very easy to give someone a vaccine,” she said. “The challenge is the logistics.”
As industry experts and health officials grapple with this, law enforcement officers and cyber experts face an equally pressing challenge regarding the potential security threats associated with such a high-demand product.
“It’s the world’s most precious commodity right now,” said Lisa Forte, a former UK counterintelligence officer and partner at Red Goat, a cybersecurity company. “This will of course attract highly skilled cyber criminals, criminal groups and state actors.”
Europol warned that organized crime groups could crack down on trucks with vaccines against theft and kidnapping, and Interpol last week warned of a “rush of all kinds of criminal activity related to the COVID-19 vaccine,” which it calls “liquid gold” has designated. ”
From the factory to hospitals and other locations, the Pfizer vaccine – because it must be stored at around minus 70 degrees Celsius – is acutely susceptible to sabotage in addition to theft.
“With the vaccine, the two biggest risks are maintaining the cold chain and being intercepted by public or private actors,” said Sarah Rathke, an attorney at Squire Patton Boggs, who specializes in supply chain litigation.
“It is possibly the toughest supply chain challenge in recent history as there is not much time to prepare,” added Rathke.
Cyberattacks can reveal a wealth of information about the vaccines that can be exploited by state actors and criminal gangs, experts say.
Last week, IBM announced it had discovered a number of cyberattacks against companies involved in spreading coronavirus vaccines around the world in September. IBM said the attackers, whose identities could not be established, tried to learn how the vaccines were stored and dispensed.
“We targeted petrochemical companies because they are essential for making dry ice to store the vaccine,” said Claire Zaboeva, a senior cyber threat analyst at IBM’s Security X-Force.
Ms. Zaboeva added that state actors or even terrorist groups could try to disrupt supplies as nations compete to be the first to administer the vaccine. “Making a lot of vaccine doses spoiled and useless would be a pretty devastating attack,” she said.
While security agencies address these concerns, the UK health service will face the daunting problem of managing a mass vaccination program that reaches the population farther and faster than any other public health work in living memory.
A charity, St. John Ambulance, wants to train up to 30,000 vaccines and others in vaccination centers.
“Introducing a vaccine to tens of millions of people will be a monumental task as we seek to save lives and hopefully get back to our normal way of life,” said Ian Hudspeth, chairman of the Community Wellbeing Board for the Local Government, which represents local communities .
Success is hardly guaranteed as the UK achieved few logistical results during the Covid-19 crisis. In the early stages of the pandemic, hospitals chronically lacked basic protective equipment such as masks and gloves, putting some workers at risk of infection.
Since then, the government has made efforts to put in place a testing and tracing system, even though the much-criticized project was valued at around $ 16 billion.
Pfizer’s problems in sourcing raw materials alone could mean the number of vaccine doses promised for delivery to the UK this year may be cut by half to five million. And there is a potential bottleneck in the production of dry ice that is needed to package and ship the vaccine.
However, experts are cautiously optimistic that the vaccine rollout will go better than the government’s earlier efforts to fight the pandemic, as it is handled under the umbrella of the National Health Service, which has extensive experience organizing mass vaccinations such as annual flu shots .
“It won’t be without its problems because of its size and logistics – I would be amazed if nothing went wrong anywhere in six months,” said Helen Buckingham, director of strategy and operations at the Nuffield Trust, a health research institute.
However, the concept of mass vaccination is well known, she added, “and overall people go to great lengths to do this work.”
Vaccines are sold in three different places: hospitals; Medical practices and clinics; and temporary vaccination centers that are still in preparation, including transit sites, sports stadiums, and public buildings. General practitioners, who will shoulder much of the burden, can draw on their experience of delivering at least 15 million flu vaccinations each year.
However, the coronavirus vaccination will be different for several reasons. In addition to the vaccine against Pfizer and BioNTech, the UK is likely to get at least two more approved, one from Moderna and one from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. But when and where everyone will be available is unclear.
Martin Marshall, Chairman of the Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners, notes that the refrigeration requirements, especially for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, are a complication that doctors do not have to deal with flu shots. Both require a second injection after a few weeks, which can be an administrative nightmare.
“We’re pretty used to running large vaccination programs, but of course nobody has had to do one unless vaccinations are done in pre-filled syringes,” said Marshall.
According to experts, doctor’s offices and other makeshift clinics could come into play more if the AstraZeneca vaccine is approved. Not only does it cost a lot less, but it can also be stored with normal refrigeration.
Then there are concerns that the average Briton, let alone anti-vaccination campaigners, will be reluctant to take the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are based on relatively untested technology.
Priority is given to those with the highest risk and the oldest Brits. Therefore, a system is also needed to call the right people for appointments at certain times and to do this again three weeks later for the second shot.
Early plans to vaccinate nursing home residents have been postponed because of the deceptively annoying question of how to dismantle Pfizer-supplied 975-dose batches and get them safely into those facilities. And it is unclear when – and in what quantities – other vaccines will be available.
All of this has to happen at a time when the health sector is in acute strain, its staff is overwhelmed after months of relentless pressure and during a winter season when people are generally more susceptible to disease.
Even so, Mr. Marshall is confident that the introduction of the vaccine can be successful.
“I think we can do this job if we work across the NHS and show some flexibility,” he said. “It plays with the strength of the NHS, a centralized, organized and managed system – and it also plays with our values.”
