I can’t wait for Mum to have vaccine, insists Pfizer boss
THE boss of the pharmaceutical giant behind the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine has hit out at foreign critics of the UK’s rapid approval of the drug.
Ben Osborn, the UK chief executive of Pfizer, said he is so confident about the safety of the jab that he is ‘willing to take it today’ – adding that he wants his mother to have it as soon as possible, too.
He also admitted to being disappointed that the rollout had been ‘politicised’ after the vaccine, developed with the German firm BioNTech, got the green light for use in the UK before regulators in Europe and America had acted.
American immunologist Dr Anthony Fauci, a key member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force, angered Ministers in Britain by claiming that the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency had not reviewed the vaccine ‘as carefully’ as its US counterparts. He later withdrew his remarks.
‘I was disappointed, although not surprised,’ Mr Osborn said. ‘It is frustrating that science has won here, and we’re starting to mix politics and science.
‘That’s like oil and water to me. It is not a good mix.’
Around 800,000 doses of the vaccine will have been shipped from Pfizer’s manufacturing plant in Belgium to the UK by Tuesday when the first jabs are administered.
Last night, Public Health England issued photographs of a line of high-tech freezers at a secure location ready to store thousands of doses of the vaccine.
While Mr Osborn, 43, will not take the vaccine until his priority group is reached, he said: ‘I would willingly take it today.
‘I hope that my mother who is high up the priority list will be in a position to either receive our vaccine or potentially one of the others, subject to their authorisation in the coming weeks. I have no hesitation in recommending my own family to get into the queue.’