(London) It is the “national duty” of every Briton: after having identified the very first death in Europe of the Omicron variant, the United Kingdom is working hard on Monday to administer a booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to all adults by the end of December.
Long queues of several hours formed in front of the vaccination centers, the site of the health service struggled to respond to requests for appointments and hundreds of soldiers were mobilized to respond to the Herculean task to which face the health authorities.
“I took my morning to be vaccinated because I am going to see my grandparents,” Sarah Jackson, 29, told AFP in front of a vaccination center in London. “I was told that there was a two hour line to register and then two hours to be vaccinated.”
Hurry up. Very hard hit by the pandemic with more than 146,500 deaths and 50,000 daily contaminations, the United Kingdom, which has 66 million inhabitants, is now facing “an Omicron tidal wave”, in the words by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
“Unfortunately, Omicron generates hospitalizations and it has been confirmed that at least one patient has died from Omicron,” he said during a visit to a vaccination center in the British capital.
Asked by AFP, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) confirmed that it “indeed appeared to be the first confirmed death linked to the (variant) Omicron” of the coronavirus, at least in Europe. But “many cases have not been the subject of genomic sequencing” and it is therefore “impossible to know if this is the first death linked to Omicron” anyway, qualified the center.
“National duty”
In order to avoid seeing the hospitals overwhelmed, a race against time is engaged on the vaccination plan: the government has advanced by one month the objective of offering in England a booster shot to all over 18 years old, who will now be able to benefit from it before the New Year.
The task promises to be titanic. Multiplication of vaccination centers, extended hours, deployment of the army: the recall campaign, which will consist of doubling the number of third doses offered to bring them to around one million per day, is on an “unprecedented” scale in the United Kingdom, said Health Minister Sajid Javid on Sky News television.
So much so that Boris Johnson launched Monday evening a large “call for volunteers” to recruit volunteers to carry out this “national mission”. “We need tens of thousands of people to help us,” he wrote in a statement, which said 13,000 people have already offered to help during the past week.
Labor opposition leader Keir Starmer on Monday night supported the decision to speed up the vaccination campaign in a televised address. He called on the British to take up this “great challenge”, saying it was their “national duty”.
Anglican spiritual leader Justin Welby “encouraged people to get vaccinated” on Times Radio, saying it was everyone’s “moral” duty.
Since two doses of the vaccine are considered insufficient to provide a good level of protection against the Omicron variant, approximately 40% of those over 12 years of age have already received a third.
“Phenomenal” spread
Omicron “is spreading at a phenomenal rate, which has never been seen before”, with the number of contaminations doubling every two to three days, said Sajid Javid. Detected in the UK at the end of November, Omicron should soon be the dominant variant, the government believes.
A total of 4,713 Omicron cases were identified in that country on Monday, but the actual number of cases is believed to be much higher.
This is why teleworking and the wearing of masks in almost all closed places have recently been decreed. Despite this instruction, the traffic was dense Monday morning in the business district of the City and some buses were crowded.
A health passport will also be imposed from Wednesday in large gathering places, a measure that angered some of the deputies of the conservative majority.
Submitted to a vote by MPs on Tuesday, these new measures are expected to be adopted with the support of the opposition Labor party.
They come in a difficult context for Boris Johnson, weakened by a series of scandals linked to supposed parties in Downing Street last winter, when the British had to limit their social interactions.