As the pandemic continues to cause chaos worldwide, a successful vaccine rollout is of much interest to the global community with nurses adopting a leading role in the programme, be this in the hospital setting, in care homes and in broader community venues. The pandemic is the UK’s worst ever health crisis, and it has been getting worse and worse. The UK continues to have one of the worst COVID-19 death rates in the world. It cannot be overstated how enormous the vaccination task is. Across the globe countries have started undertaking mass vaccination programmes for COVID-19 at a pace, and the UK is no exception to this.
Trials
This global pandemic has generated an unprecedented effort to develop vaccines against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In the UK local Clinical Research Networks (CRNs) were charged with the setting-up and delivery of the UK Urgent Public Health (UPH) COVID-19 clinical trials at speed in attempts to support the worldwide battle against COVID-19 and to prevent overwhelming the NHS1 and to save as many lives as possible. The vaccines have been developed in record time. The Pfizer vaccine underwent trail safety analysis with participants coming from higher risk COVID-19 groups, including those over 55 years old, those who were overweight or obese, those with diabetes, people with pulmonary disease and those with HIV. 2,3
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