NOW FOR THE VACCINE BLAME GAME
PM and Hancock deny delays – but point the finger at drugs firms and watchdog checks
THOUSANDS of Britons received their first dose of the Oxford vaccine yesterday as a blame game erupted over the speed of its rollout.
Health chiefs hope the biggest vaccination drive in NHS history can now accelerate dramatically, with half a million doses of the new jab approved for use this week.
Just over a million people have received either the Pfizer or Oxford vaccine since Margaret Keenan became the world’s first non-trial recipient on December 8. More than one in five over-80s have had their jab.
However, the number of doses ready for use remains short of the target of two million a week, which would allow 25million of the most vulnerable to be vaccinated by spring.
Last night Boris Johnson insisted that the NHS still has ‘ realistic expectations’ that the top four priority groups would be protected from Covid ‘by the middle of February’. The four bands – covering residents in care homes and their carers, the over-70s, frontline health and social care workers and the ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ – cover around 10million Britons.
Mr Johnson said all these people could receive the vaccine within six weeks ‘if things go well and with a fair wind in our sails’. However, this target would require the vaccination rate to speed up considerably.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock yesterday denied supplies had been hit by delays – and appeared to blame manufacturers and healthcare watchdogs for the slow start.
‘There isn’t a delay. It’s a matter of getting the vaccine as soon as it’s manufactured,’ he told BBC Breakfast, promising the programme would be ‘accelerated’ in weeks to come. ‘[The vaccine] needs to go through the crucial safety checks, which are obviously very important, and get into the NHS and delivered into people’s arms,’ he said.
Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) was the first watchdog in the world to approve both the Pfizer jab and the latest vaccine, from the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. However, its stipulations include that every batch of vaccines must be inspected before the jabs can be administered. The process takes several days.
Mr Johnson also appeared to blame these quality checks for a sluggish start, vowing that Britain would see a ‘massive ramp-up’ in vaccination numbers in the coming weeks. He said of the figures so far: ‘We have the capacity... the issue is to do with supply of the vaccine. It’s not so much a manufacturing issue, although that’s part of it. Each batch needs to be properly approved and quality controlled.’
The head of the MHRA pointed to the supply chain – as did Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director of NHS England. He said he was confident that the NHS could handle ‘tens of millions of doses’ by April, as suggested by the Prime Minister – but stressed it could only deliver a vaccine ‘as quickly as it is supplied to us’.
Dr June Raine, chief executive of the MHRA, said the watchdog ‘is fully scaled up to do the batch testing’ but was waiting to receive more vaccines from manufacturers.
‘It’s a supply chain that goes right back from the manufacturer, right through to MHRA, and then on to the clinical bedside or where the vaccines are delivered,’ she said. ‘We are a step on the road but our capacity is there, I’m very clear about that.’
Professor Powis told the BBC: ‘We’ve already delivered over a million vaccines of the Pfizer jab. Now we’ve got the AstraZeneca one so we aim to get it into people’s arms as quickly as it is supplied to us. If we get two million doses a week, our aim is to get two million doses into the arms of those priority groups.’
The new vaccine is being delivered at hospitals in Oxford, London, Brighton, Morecambe in Lancashire and Nuneaton in Warwickshire for the first few days to ensure its safety. The initial 530,000 doses will then be made available to 540 GP vaccination sites and 101 hospitals later this week, with more venues expected to open within days.
A second delivery of the Oxford vaccine – which is easier to store than the Pfizer one – is expected by the end of the week. However, the Department of Health would not confirm how many of the 100million doses on order will arrive then, nor would it provide a timetable for how quickly the batches would be delivered.
The NHS has vaccinated more people than anywhere else in Europe. However, the UK is already falling behind Israel, which has vaccinated citizens ten times faster per head.
More than 10 per cent of Israel’s population have received their first dose, the Adam Smith Institute said.
A report by the think-tank warned that more British civilians have died from Covid than were killed in the Second World War. It called for a ‘war response’ with better utilisation of the private sector and pharmacists to deliver the jabs.
‘Approved and quality controlled’ ‘Our capacity is there’