UK ‘among first to get vaccine’
PEOPLE in the UK are likely to be among the first in the world to receive a coronavirus jab, the Health Secretary has said.
The UK’s medicines regulator could approve the Pfizer or Oxford jabs within days of a licence application being submitted due to rolling analysis of the data, according to Matt Hancock.
He told MPs in the Commons the focus was on delivering the vaccines from Oxford and Pfizer if they pass safety tests and are approved by regulators, with a further vaccine possibly coming next summer. He said: “It is next summer before the next vaccine candidate comes on stream, and so the focus of the roll-out plan at the moment is on delivering the Pfizer and the AstraZeneca projects if they pass the safety tests.”
Earlier, Mr Hancock said the military and NHS staff were on standby to roll out a Covid-19 vaccine across the UK from the start of December and will work “seven days a week”, with GPs, new vaccination centres and pharmacists all playing a role.
Mr Hancock said there were many hurdles to overcome before the “vast task” of vaccination could begin, including thorough examination of clinical trial data.
But he said the NHS was leading the work to get a vaccine to those most in need as soon as possible, including the elderly and health and care staff, though most other people will not get a jab until 2021.
Asked whether a vaccine could be available by Christmas, Mr Hancock said that was “absolutely a possibility”, adding that vaccination clinics would be open on bank holidays and weekends.
Data on the jab from Oxford University and AstraZeneca is just weeks away, with Sir John Bell, who is part of the Oxford team, saying he expects two or three jabs to be available by the new year.
Mr Hancock said the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency had been working closely with both Pfizer and AstraZeneca, gathering information as clinical trials progressed.
Mr Hancock said Oxford’s vaccine was easier to deploy than Pfizer’s, which needs to be kept at a temperature of minus 70C.
Pfizer’s jab is also being manufactured in Belgium, he said, but a lot of work had been carried out to deploy any vaccines as soon as they become available. “We’ll be among the first countries in the world to be able to start to do this,” he said. “We may end up being right at the start of that.”
The Health Secretary said that once a vaccine became available, it would be delivered through care homes, GPs and pharmacists, and “go-to” vaccination centres set up in venues such as sports halls.
“We will be working across the NHS with the support of the armed forces seven days a week, over weekends, over bank holidays, to get this rolled out,” he said.
He added that children would not need to have the vaccine and it would be voluntary for adults. However, he later told MPs it was not yet known what proportion of the population would need to be vaccinated to stop the epidemic.