Deputy Nurse Katie McIntosh presents the first of two Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines to Vivien McKay, clinical nurse manager at Western General Hospital, on the first day of the largest vaccination program in British history, in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. December 8, 2020.
Andrew Milligan | Reuters
LONDON – The British government has questions about whether the country is on the verge of experiencing a shortage of coronavirus vaccines, which could surpass the successful vaccination program so far.
“We have less stock than we could have hoped for in the coming weeks, but we expect it to increase again later,” Housing Minister Robert Jenrick told the BBC on Thursday.
“The rollout of the vaccine will be slightly slower than we had hoped, but not slower than the target,” he said. “We have every reason to believe that supply will increase in the months of May, June and July.”
Jenrick later told Sky News that the government was “getting vaccines from around the world and that we occasionally ran into some problems and that led to it, and this issue has some stock in the coming weeks.”
Jenrick’s comments come amid a flurry of reports in the British media that the British explosion is on the verge of hitting a riot. It has been widely reported that a delivery of millions of doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot manufactured by the Serum Institute of India could be delayed by four weeks.
However, Jenrick declined to comment on specific contracts. CNBC contacted the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, for comment on the reports, but no response yet.
Ten million doses of AstraZeneca Covid vaccine are expected to come from the SII, Reuters reported in early March. In total, the UK has ordered 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, with the bulk of the supply within the UK.
However, Britain is also facing possible supply disruptions if the EU goes ahead with a proposal to curb the export of vaccines made in the bloc while leaving its own program behind. Supplies of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, which the UK also uses in its vaccination program, come from Belgium.
Since its inception in December, Britain’s health service has overseen the vaccination of more than 25 million people with a first dose of vaccine. More than 1.7 million people have now shown a second dose of vaccine currently being used in the UK, government data show.
‘Still on course’
According to the BBC, the National Health Service had already warned in a letter to local health organizations in April against a decline in supply for England.
But the government has said it is still on track to offer a first dose of the vaccine to people over 50 by April 15, and all adults in the UK a first shot by the end of July.
“The vaccination program will continue in the coming weeks and more people will receive the first and second doses,” a health and social care spokesman said in a statement Wednesday night.
“As has been the case since the start of the program, the number of vaccinations carried out over time will vary due to supply.”
“Big problem”
Global health experts have long warned that vaccines, their supply and distribution, will be an area for disagreement between countries and regions.
Dr Margaret Harris, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, told CNBC on Thursday that the public health body knew from the start of the pandemic that vaccine distribution would be a ‘major problem’.
“In previous outbreaks, this is exactly what happened. Some groups and countries had good access (to vaccines) and even had excessive access, while many countries left nothing behind. We saw this during the 2009 flu pandemic,” he said. she to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
“We really encourage manufacturers to make arrangements to enable more production around the world to really increase supply,” she said.
The UK’s vaccination program was a saving grace after the pandemic that hit the country hard. The UK has the fifth highest number of cases in the world, with more than 4.2 million infections, and according to Johns Hopkins University, more than 126,000 deaths have been recorded so far.