The UK will start dosing Pfizer and German partner BioNTech SE on Tuesday.
Even as it starts the first Covid immunizations with an injection from Pfizer Inc., the UK plans to test it in combination with another vaccine from AstraZeneca Plc.
Studies aimed at determining whether using the two jabs together can improve immunity are planned for next year, according to the UK Vaccine Working Group. The group unveiled the plans by publishing a report on its work so far, which includes deals for 357 million doses from seven manufacturers and investments at three sites to expand the country’s manufacturing capacity.
The UK will begin dosing Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech SE on Tuesday, becoming the first Western country to receive a vaccine. The enormous logistical challenge of inoculating up to 67 million people is beginning in some 50 hospitals.
Approval of the takeover by Astra and its partner, the University of Oxford, could come before the end of the year. That would set the stage for combination trials, which will include initial injections of either vaccine, followed by a booster injection with the other.
“These will be relatively small studies,” Clive Dix, vice chair of the task force, said at a news conference. “They will only be with the approved vaccines.”
Dix will take over as the task force chair on an interim basis when Kate Bingham steps down this month.
Brexit plans
The panel said there are plans to protect the UK from the consequences of vaccines if there is a no-deal Brexit. Some of the initial UK doses of the Astra-Oxford vaccine will be imported, although more than 80 million of the order for 100 million doses will be produced onshore, according to Ian McCubbin, manufacturing leader of the task force.
“The vast, vast, vast majority of what AstraZeneca will produce for the UK will be in the UK,” McCubbin said at the briefing. “It’s just that the initial supply, and it’s a bit of a quirk of the show, actually comes from the Netherlands and Germany.”
The task force is also looking to build a bulk antibody manufacturing site in Britain. More than half a million people in the UK are highly immunosuppressed and potentially unable to get vaccinated, according to the report. A cocktail of antibodies, like the one Astra is developing and of which the task force has purchased up to a million doses, could be used to protect these individuals.
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