Deputy Charge Nurse Katie McIntosh, Scotland On the first day of the largest immunization program in British history in Edinburgh, UK, Vivin McK Clinical Nurse Manager at Western General Hospital has two Pfizer / Bioentech COVID-19 vaccine pockets first. December 8, 2020.
Andrew Milligan | Reuters
LONDON – The UK government is facing questions about whether the country is facing a shortage of coronavirus vaccine supplies, a factor that could fuel its successful vaccination program so far.
“We have less supply than we hoped for next week but we expect to increase it later,” Housing Secretary Robert Generick told the BBC on Thursday. “
“The vaccine rollout will be slightly slower than we expected,” he said. “We have every reason to believe that supply will increase in May, June and July.”
Later, Generick told Sky News that the government is “sourcing vaccines from all over the world and we are experiencing some problems at times and this is the reason why this issue will supply a little in the coming weeks.”
Genrick’s remarks came amid a flurry of British media reports that a UK rollout would spread some unrest. Delivery of millions of doses of Ogford-AstraZeneca shot has been widely reported to be within four weeks of being made by the Serum Institute of India.
However, Genrick declined to comment on the exact deal. CNBC has contacted India F India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, to comment on the reports, but has not yet received a response.
Ten million doses of the AstraZeneca covid vaccine were expected to come from SII, Reuters reported in early March. Overall, the UK has ordered 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Ox Xford vaccine, with most supplies coming from within the UK.
However, the UK is also facing potential supply bottlenecks if its own program is damaged if the EU passes a proposal to block the export of vaccines made in the bloc. The UK also supplies the Pfizer-Bioentech vaccine used in its vaccination program to Belgium.
Since its inception in December, Britain’s health service has monitored the vaccination of 25 million people with the first dose of the vaccine. Government figures show that the two-shot vaccine is currently used in the UK, with more than 1.7 million.
‘Still on track’
According to the BBC, the National Health Service “in a letter to local health organizations in April,” warned of a supply cut for England in April.
But the government has said it is preparing to give the first dose of all 50 vaccines by April 15 and the first pill to all adults in the UK by the end of July.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said in a statement Wednesday night that the vaccination program would continue in the coming weeks and more people would continue to receive first and second doses.
“Since the program began, the number of vaccinations may change over time due to supply.”
‘Big problem’
Global health experts have long warned that vaccines, their supply and distribution, would be the right area for disputes between those countries and territories.
A spokesman for the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Harris told CNBC on Thursday that the public health organization has known since the onset of the epidemic that vaccine distribution is a “big problem.”
“Exactly the same thing has happened since the last outbreak. Some groups and countries had better vaccines and more consumption, while many countries had nothing left. We saw this during the 2009 flu pandemic.” He also appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk” Europe. “
“We encourage manufacturers to make arrangements to enable more production around the world to really increase supply,” he said.
The UK’s vaccination program has been a saving grace in the wake of the epidemic that has hit the country hard. According to Johns Hopkins University, the UK is the fifth largest case in the world with more than 2.2 million infections, and 166,000 deaths so far.
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