In 2021 there will be a massive vaccination campaign like no other. Today is about stopping the covid – 19, but to In the middle of the last century, a vaccination program became the weapon against another deadly virus.
The long line of people outside the health center patiently waiting his turn to get vaccinated.
Special clinics are putting 600 injections per hour, but the queues don’t shorten.
Meanwhile, public health officials are desperately trying to track down anyone who has come into contact with people who carry a deadly virus.
It may sound familiar, but we are talking about Glasgow, Scotland, in the middle of a smallpox outbreak in 1950.
Suspected chickenpox Smallpox has already been eradicated, but its characteristic rash used to be feared worldwide and it is estimated that 300 millions of people died from the in disease only in the 20th century.
Severe outbreaks were rare in the postwar period, but that changed in March 1950 when the Indian sailor Mussa Ali arrived in Glasgow.
Ali was admitted to an infectious disease hospital with pneumonia and suspected chickenpox.
It was later discovered that he had smallpox and was the source of an outbreak that would eventually infect 19 people and would kill six.
Among the Dead were a doctor, four nurses and a laundry clerk, all of whom had had some direct contact with Ali at the hospital.
The crucial thing was that none of those who died had been vaccinated against smallpox and fears about the potential scale of the outbreak prompted a huge response from public health officials.
And the type of measures they put in place at that time has u n surprising parallel a few 70 years later.
Visits were immediately banned at 200 hospitals nationwide and a tracking system finally found 1. 971 possible contacts of those who contracted the disease.
These ranged from family members to bus drivers.
Suspicious contacts were taken to their local hospitals to be checked while their houses and clothes were disinfected.
However, the main goal was to vaccinate people as quickly as possible.
A total of 7 emergency clinics were established in Glasgow.
Hundreds of thousands injected These centers were open 12 hours a day and the busiest injected 600 people per hour.
The outbreak was not front page image.
In the first 12 days, approximately 200, 000 people were immunized in Glasgow and a total of 300, 000 received the vaccine when the end of the outbreak was declared.
The first Monday of 2021, vaccinators began administering the Oxford vaccines in the same city where the emergency occurred 7 decades ago.
The one that is cheaper to produce than the Pfizer and can be stored in a common refrigerator are the keys to a quick and easy mass vaccination like the one that was organized at that time.
It is unlikely, however, that the queues of people outside health centers will be repeated, since in this case people must have appointment times to receive the vaccine.
Public thanks Speaking to The Scotsman newspaper at the height of the smallpox crisis, the city’s official health officer, Dr. Stuart Laidlaw, said: “ The first wave is over, from what I can see, but we just don’t know what the next wave will bring . ”
The The first person to die in the outbreak was Dr. Janet Fleming, from 29 years, from Hamilton, who had been present when Ali first showed up at the hospital.
The 17 April, Glasgow was declared out of danger and Laidlaw told The Scotsman he was grateful to the public for having “ acted with great wisdom “.
Other newspaper reports of the time said that Ali was cheered outside the hospital after he recovered.
The act of applauding discharged covid patients, many of whom had spent sem patients with mechanical ventilators in the ICU, has been a feature of the current pandemic.
In the UK, the coronavirus peaked in mid-April last year, but hospital beds are being occupied once again by those suffering the worst symptoms.
Now it is expected that a vaccination program with the ambition, speed, public cooperation and organization of the Glasgow of the years 50 provide the answer to end this pandemic in Scotland and beyond .
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