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The Covid-19 vaccine shortage “will last for months,” warned England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty.
In a letter to doctors, Professor Whitty said the shortage of coronavirus hits “is a reality that cannot be ruled out.”
In England, 786,000 people received a first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, with 264,406 injections in the week of Christmas, while 944,539 received the vaccine in total across the UK, reports The Mirror.
Professor Whitty’s letter goes on to say: “The Covid-19 pandemic is without a doubt the biggest health crisis in a generation and without a doubt in our professional lives.
“We are at a critical point in the pandemic as the emergence of a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 with a markedly higher growth rate is rapidly shifting the epidemiological curve in the wrong direction across much of the UK as a whole. winter. “
He continues: “We have to make sure we maximize the number of eligible people who get the vaccine.
“Currently, the main barrier to this is the availability of vaccines, a global problem, and this will continue to be the case for several months and more importantly during the critical winter period.
“The availability of the AZ vaccine reduces, but does not eliminate, this big problem. The vaccine shortage is a reality that cannot be ruled out.”
Government ministers originally said Britain could have 30 million doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca jab ready by September 2020.
It was subsequently reduced to 4 million doses by the end of 2020. In reality, only 530,000 doses were “available for the UK” as of December 30.
The government insisted last night that tens of millions of doses would be available by the end of March.
A spokeswoman for the Business Department said the delay was due to the need for each batch of vaccine to pass the regulator’s standards.
The Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) did not establish its authorization conditions until December 30.
A government official said: “Batch testing is underway to ensure that the vaccines consistently meet these stringent requirements.
“This could not be done before the MHRA outlined the conditions.
“If each batch meets quality standards, then it is released and handed over to the NHS and decentralized administrations.”
Britain ordered 100 million doses in May and that order still stands. The question has always been how many are available for immediate use.
On May 17, the Trade Department said: “If the Oxford vaccine is successful, AstraZeneca will work to make up to 30 million doses available by September for people in the UK.”
On November 4, Vaccine Task Force Chair Kate Bingham said 4 million doses would be delivered in 2020, saying, “We haven’t put them in vials yet because as soon as you put them in the vials, you start the clock for … the shelf life, or how fast you have to use the vaccine. “
On December 30, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the House of Commons: “We already have 530,000 doses available in the UK as of Monday, and AstraZeneca is due to pay millions by early February.”
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