In the UK, sports stadiums and 800 year-old cathedrals have become makeshift COVID vaccine clinics

When it came to finding venues to host Britain’s enormous COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the UK government had to get creative.

To meet its target of vaccinating 15 million Britons in just two months, it would need to enlist not just GP surgeries and hospitals, but large sites capable of accommodating around 1,000 people a day.

The vaccination sites would also have to be well ventilated, with wide entrances and exits, spacious rooms that could be easily transformed into safe waiting areas and, in an ideal world, have plenty of parking.

These stringent requirements have led to slightly surreal scenes of 95-year-olds queueing to get into nightclubs, football stadiums and the Epsom Downs racecourse for their jabs. Churches, with their soaring…