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Vaccinating the population against Covid-19 will cost up to £ 12 billion, the Whitehall spending watchdog has revealed, amid details of tensions between health agencies over the launch.
The National Audit Office said the government would spend up to £ 11.7 billion buying and manufacturing Covid-19 jabs for the UK before rolling them out in England.
A report released Wednesday reveals that Public Health officials in England complained that they had been excluded from key decisions despite having prior experience with vaccine administration programs.
Meg Hillier, chair of the Commons public accounts committee, said the report showed that the government was right to endorse several vaccines, but that the accountability arrangements were “very unusual.”
“Organizations that know how to carry out mass vaccination campaigns did not always have a place at the table when decisions were made.
“The logistical challenges of vaccinating tens of millions of people, in addition to the other pressures on the NHS, cannot be underestimated,” he said.
The report examined how the government has approached the development and planning of a mass vaccination program.
Kate Bingham, the venture capitalist and chair of the vaccine task force, was appointed in May and reports directly to Boris Johnson. She has been in charge of selecting which vaccines to buy and ensuring UK access to sufficient quantities.
NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSE & I) and Public Health England lead the operational implementation of the vaccination program in England.
The report revealed that Public Health England expressed concern in June that “the operational experience of vaccine deployment was not represented on Taskforce boards and groups.” It wasn’t until September 2020 that both Public Health England and NHS England and Improvement had regular high-level representation, according to the report.
Current government plans are to vaccinate up to 25 million people with two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine throughout 2021, but these are subject to change depending on the development of the vaccine, according to the report.
The public purse may incur additional costs because vaccine contracts each contain a form of compensation protection for pharmaceutical companies in the event of any legal action arising from the adverse effects of vaccines.
There has been no cap on the amount the government could have to pay if there is a successful claim against the companies in four of the five contracts agreed to so far, the auditors warned.
The UK has ordered 100 million doses of Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, as well as 40 million from Pfizer / BioNTech, seven million from Moderna, 60 million from Valneva SE and 60 million injections from Novavax.
The Pfizer vaccine is already being released by the NHS after it was approved by the regulator.
Bingham, who is married to Treasury Minister Jesse Norman, is expected to leave her post later this year.
A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: “Thanks to the work of our Vaccine Task Force, the UK is now in an exceptionally strong position with a diverse portfolio of 357 million doses of some of the vaccines most promising candidates in the world.
“To ensure that our country is in the best position to make any Covid-19 vaccine available as quickly as possible and to respond to future pandemics, we have worked to build a complete domestic vaccine manufacturing base from scratch by investing in technology from tip. art installations across the country. “
