2021. A call to arms

The New Year has started and, as the Prime Minister has put us into a third lockdown, it promises to be as much of a roller coaster as the year to which many of us have recently wished ‘good riddance’. With great fanfare, the AstraZeneca (Oxford) and Moderna vaccines have been approved for use, and the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine has already been widely distributed since the beginning of December. It has been reported that 2,286,572 people received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine between 8 December 2020 and Sunday 10 January.¹ The enormous task ahead is to provide vaccination for the rest of the UK, which will then provide protection for the population against this devastating infection.

The call has gone out for vaccinators in many regions, and in answer to this I spent a few hours this weekend on the e-LfH portal studying the coronavirus (COVID-19) information.^2,3,4 To reassure you, it takes only 2–3 hours to cover the material, after which a 10-question assessment can be taken and once passed, provides a certificate to proceed.