As a retired GP delivering the vaccine in North Wales, I have seen no wastage

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The vaccine rollout is well underway across the UK – but are all the doses being used? (Getty Images)

I write in response to your article by the anonymous doctor in Sussex about vaccine wastage (Voices, 30 January).

As a GP who retired three and a half years ago, I am part of a multidisciplinary team offering Pfizer vaccines in Deeside, north Wales. We are an enthusiastic group that is totally committed to using every last dose. I have personally witnessed a jab being given at 8.40pm when the centre officially closes at 8pm.

As much as we would all like to have our second dose, we are making sure that this does not happen but that someone from the reserve list does turn up.

H J Stiggelbout

Deeside, north Wales

Vaccine wars

I voted Remain – no apology, I am a committed European. However, the “vaccine war” has exposed the naked folly of trying to impose trade restrictions in places that could be described as the opposite of the “Heart of Europe”. The pragmatic approach is for the EU to turn a blind eye to trade in the British Isles as a whole – and instead invest its energies to building up a “Europe of Europe”, via infrastructure projects and greater integration.

In the meantime I hope this incident emboldens London and Dublin to insist that they are not in the business of laying down trade borders on these isles. The rail tunnel to Belfast is necessary for greater UK internal trade and post-Brexit competitiveness. Jobs in the UK logistics sector would expand as the Irish Republic would value the facility of loading their freight onto trains at Belfast for direct transit to continental Europe.

John Barstow

Address supplied

The EU’s latest cock up as regards the Covid vaccine rollout serves them right.

This is the same organisation that has caused food shortages in Northern Ireland yet has refused to blink an eye and tried to sell us all down the river thanks to incompetent appeasers, such as Philip Hammond, Gavin Barwell, Theresa May, and Damian Hinds.

It proves and exposes their true selfish intention, which is to dominate business, make mega bucks for the elite, and leave the poor tax payer to foot the bill via unfair stealth taxes and bureaucracy at every turn.

Geoffrey Brooking

Havant

It’s sad that the ongoing Covid-19 vaccine wars between rich nations are no less than the past world wars. Though there is no conventional warfare here, the end result is the same – a staggering and mounting death toll.

Unfortunately, 21st-century Darwinism, epitomised by the instinct of the “survival of the fittest”, is playing openly. Nations with resources and monetary power are calling the shots, with only a limited voice given to the developing nations.  

While each country has the paramount responsibility of protecting and safeguarding the best interest of its citizens, I hope there’s a reasonable measure of equity injected in the vaccine distribution and procurement process.

The widely echoed analysis by global public health experts contends that there is no long term national or regional solution to contain Covid-19 across the world, rather only one “global solution” to this pandemic: jointly targeting an agile virus that is constantly mutating. 

I hope the rich nations proactively support the international community in addressing this unprecedented task as one interconnected world.  

A M Karnik  

New York

Scottish independence

In comparing the routes to independence taken by Ireland a century ago with Scotland today ('Scotland is on the same path as Ireland a hundred years ago – the independence movement will be very difficult to stop’, 29 January), the absence of a formidable Unionist force in Scotland linked to Westminster looks to be a significant factor.

Unlike the Ulster Unionist Party, which under the leadership of Sir Edward Carson was an effective extension of the British Tory party and prepared under Bonar Law to block home rule at any cost (evidenced with the Curragh army mutiny of 1914), no such alignment of interests are evident in Scotland. With rare exceptions, the Scottish Tory party has been in political retreat since Thatcher, with only Ruth Davidson, the last credible Scottish leader likely to have stopped the decline.

And whereas in Ireland the forces of Unionism, assisted by the sectarian divisions, successfully stopped full independence with partition and the creation of Northern Ireland, no such political, geographic, or sectarian divisions are likely to emerge in Scotland in the event of a new referendum being held to change the likely “yes” outcome.  

Paul Dolan

Cheshire

Easy enough to pick a vaccine winner

Labour Party members must be delighted by John Rentoul’s view in Saturday’s Independent that they believe “above all” that multinational drug companies are bad and that the EU is good ('Vaccines success is an opportunity for Keir Starmer to wean his party off its reflex opposition to the private sector’, 29 January). I would have thought that they may have other views about the benefits of socialism, “above all”.

He then goes on to say that the success of Britain’s vaccine programme is not down to the “profit motive alone”. I would suggest that the profit motive has very little, if any, part in the programme: the success of the rollout is down to the NHS’s proven organisational skills in delivering vaccine programmes – development of vaccines is perhaps a different matter.

It seems clear that Kate Bingham has been in a position where she has been able to pick winners by signing contracts (at what financial cost?) with any vaccine developer in the hope that some would be fulfilled, as indeed they have. Such nimbleness with no constraint (regardless of what she may have been able to do due to Brexit) would lead to success in any circumstances where the only measure is delivery.

Amanda McIntyre

East Sussex