Photographer: Anthony Devlin / Bloomberg
Photographer: Anthony Devlin / Bloomberg
The UK intends to confirm that residents have been offered a Covid-19 vaccine at every eligible care home in England, even as a dispute over exports from Europe raises concerns about supplies.
Shots were offered where residents of more than 10,000 homes are eligible, where possible. Official figures will be shown later Monday. The announcement comes after the assurance of the international trade secretary Liz Truss, yesterday that the country’s supply of vaccines is safe and that the country will stick to its rollout grid.
The UK aims to offer vaccinations to 15 million people in the top four priority groups by 15 February. These include residents of care homes, people over the age of 70, frontline health workers and clinics who are extremely vulnerable. So far, a total of 8,977.32 people have received their first dose, with a record number of nearly 600,000 people beaten on Saturday alone, the government’s data shows.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson described the care home numbers as “an important milestone in our ongoing race to vaccinate the vulnerable.” Nevertheless, he warned that the number of cases and people in the hospital remains dangerously high. More than 100,000 people have died in the UK after testing positive for the virus.
Among those hospitalized at Covid is Captain Tom Moore, the 100-year-old veteran who raised nearly 40 million pounds ($ 55 million) for the country’s health service.
The UK expanded its vaccine pipeline on Monday by exercising an option to order another 40 million doses of Valneva SE, bringing the total to 100 million doses. The UK has an option for another 90m doses from 2023-2025, according to Valneva, which the total of 190 million doses valued at as much as 1.4 billion euros ($ 1.7 billion).
| Developer | Number of doses secured by the United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Oxford / AstraZeneca | 100 million |
| Valneva | 100 million |
| GlaxoSmithKline / Sanofi Pasteur | 60 million |
| Novavax | 60 million |
| BioNTech / Pfizer | 40 million |
| Janssen | 30 million |
| Modern | 17 million |
The government is “absolutely confident” that it can continue to deliver its vaccine plan, Truss told Sky News on Sunday. Her comments come after the European Union’s executive announced that manufacturers must obtain authorization before sending shots produced in the block to other countries. It has expressed concern about the supply of supplies from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE shot, manufactured in Belgium, in the United Kingdom
Inenting row
The origin of the dispute is the decision of AstraZeneca Plc to prioritize Britain over the EU after a Belgian production problem, which according to Brussels was a breach of contract. After a spate of activity, AstraZeneca Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said on Twitter on Sunday that he had to deliver 9 million extra vaccine doses to the EU in the first quarter of the year.
Read more: Faced with emergency vaccination, the EU has made an enemy of all
The splash has made headlines after a threat by the EU to unilaterally cause emergency clauses in its post-Brexit deal with the UK, which officials have since withdrawn. Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin told the BBC that people were “blinded” by the move, while former Prime Minister Tony Blair described it as “very foolish” and said it was jeopardizing Ireland’s 1998 Good Friday peace deal. endanger.
Von der Leyen had a video call with CEOs of pharmaceutical companies to discuss how vaccines can be deployed, manufactured and approved faster in the future.
“The pandemic emphasized that manufacturing capacity is a limiting factor. It is essential to address these challenges, “the commission said in a statement. It adds that ‘the emergence of variants of concern poses the looming threat of diminished efficacy of recently approved vaccines.’
– Assisted by Alex Morales and Marthe Fourcade
(Updates with Valneva ordered in sixth paragraph)