UK: More used to wielding a camera than a needle, taking part in a national vaccination campaign was the "last thing" documentary director Mike Day expected to be doing before the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
But the 41-year-old is no one of an army of volunteers -- many with no medical qualifications -- being recruited to help deliver Prime Minister Boris Johnson's goal of vaccinating 15 million of those most at risk from the virus by mid-February.
"When I had the opportunity to do something that made a difference I definitely wanted to jump at it so I immediately signed up when I heard about it," Day told AFP at a training session for 120 volunteers at Canary Wharf in east London on Saturday.
Volunteers from all walks of life are among the 30,000 individuals who will be recruited by St John Ambulance to administer the Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca vaccines currently authorised for general use in UK vaccination centres.
To qualify for the volunteer programme, recruits must be over the age of 18 with a secondary school education and pass a criminal background check.
More than 8.9 million people have already received a first dose of the vaccine in the United Kingdom, the first Western country to launch a massive vaccination campaign in early December.
However, the nation is one of the hardest hit by the pandemic with more than 106,000 deaths.
Johnson's Government has set itself the goal of administering 15 million doses of the jab to all individuals over 70 years of age and caregivers by mid-February.
"The only way that we're really going to see our country come out of this pandemic and the world come out of this pandemic is vaccination," Fazackerley said.
- AFP
