Assistant Nurse Katie McIntosh administers the first of two Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines to Vivien McKay, a clinical nurse at Western General Hospital, on the first day of the largest immunization program in British history in Edinburgh, Scotland. , United Kingdom 8 December 2020.
Andrew Milligan | Reuters
LONDON – The British government is facing questions about whether the country is on track to supply a shortage of coronavirus vaccines, a factor that could jeopardize its current immunization program.
“We have less supply than we would have hoped for in the coming weeks, but we expect it to grow again later,” Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said on Thursday.
“The launch of the vaccine will be slightly slower than we would have hoped, but not slower than the target,” he said. “We have every reason to believe that supply will increase in May, June and July.”
Jenrick later told Sky News that the government “supplies vaccines from around the world and that we occasionally face some problems, which has led to this, a problem with a quantity of supply in the coming weeks”.
Jenrick’s comments come amid a string of reports in the British press that the UK’s launch could be on the verge of affecting some turmoil. It has been widely reported that the delivery of millions of doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot produced by the Indian Serum Institute could be suspended for four weeks.
However, Jenrick declined to comment on specific contracts. CNBC has contacted Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker, for comments on the reports, but has not yet received a response.
Ten million doses of AstraZeneca Covid vaccine were expected to come from IBS, Reuters reported in early March. In total, the UK has ordered 100 million doses of AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, with most of the supply coming from within the UK
However, the UK is also facing possible supply disruptions if the EU goes through a proposal to halt bulk vaccine exports, while its own program lags behind. The supply of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that the United Kingdom uses in its vaccination program also comes from Belgium.
Since its launch in December, the UK health service has overseen the vaccination of more than 25 million people with a first dose of vaccine. More than 1.7 million people have now received a second dose of the two-vaccine vaccines currently used in the UK, government data show.
“Still on the right track”
The National Health Service has already warned of a cut in supplies to England “in April in a letter to local health organizations”, according to the BBC.
But the government said it was still on track to give everyone over the age of 50 a first dose of the vaccine by April 15, and a first blow to all adults in the UK by the end of July.
“The vaccination program will continue in the coming weeks and more people will continue to receive the first and second dose,” a spokesman for the Department of Health and Welfare said in a statement Wednesday night.
As has been the case since the beginning of the program, the number of vaccinations performed over time will vary depending on the offer.
‘Major problem’
Global health experts have long warned that vaccines, their supply and distribution, would be a ripe zone for discord between countries and regions.
Dr. Margaret Harris, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, told CNBC on Thursday that the public health body had known since the beginning of the pandemic that the distribution of vaccines would be a “major problem.”
“In previous outbreaks, this is exactly what happened. Some groups and countries had good access (to vaccines) and even had excessive access, while many countries were left with nothing. We saw this during the flu pandemic in 2009, “she told CNBC’s” Squawk Box Europe “.
“We really encourage producers to make arrangements to allow more productions around the world to really increase supply,” she said.
The UK vaccination program was its saving grace following the pandemic that hit the country hard. The UK has the fifth highest number of cases in the world, with over 4.2 million infections reported and has so far recorded more than 126,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.