Vaccination Centre
Jan 2021
The nice people at Grazia sent me to the, soon to be Huge, mass vaccination centre at the Excel in London. The place was eerily quiet, with lots of volunteers directing you through the empty building to the Vaccination area. There, in the huge empty halls, was the infrastructure of what will become a huge operation, with maybe 100 vaccination rooms but currently only about 10 that were working.
Queues of wheelchairs with vulnerable over 80 year olds, were waiting, accompanied by their kids or grandkids, who looked relieved that their elderly relatives, might shortly have some level of protection from the virus.
The vaccinators, a mix of medical students and nurses, were kind and efficient. Havza, who was studying medicine in Bulgaria, said that people were just so grateful and excited to get the vaccine.
It was amazing to see the Oxford university / Astra Zeneca vaccine, that I photographed in its infancy back in April 2020 - see story here - actually complete its miraculously speedy journey to real life use. It felt like a historic moment to me. A moment of hope.
