UK supply will slow down in the coming weeks, with risk of deployment

LONDON – The UK government is facing questions about whether the country is on the verge of a shortage in the supply of coronavirus vaccines, a factor that could damage its immunization program so far.

“We have less supply than we might expect for the next few weeks, but we expect it to increase again later,” Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick told the BBC on Thursday.

“The launch of the vaccine will be a little slower than we might have expected, 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 “comes from vaccines around the world and that we occasionally experience some problems, and this has caused this problem to have some supply in the coming weeks.”

Jenrick’s comments come amid a large number of reports in the British media claiming that the UK launch could be on the verge of turmoil. It has been widely reported that a million-dose delivery of the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot produced by India’s Serum Institute could be held back for four weeks.

However, Jenrick declined to comment on specific contracts. CNBC has contacted India’s Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine maker, to comment on the reports, but has yet to receive a response.

Ten million doses of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine were expected to come from IBS, Reuters reported in early March. In total, the UK has ordered 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, with most of the supply coming from the UK.

However, Britain is also facing possible supply disruptions if the EU continues with a proposal to withhold vaccine exports made to the bloc while its own program lags behind. Supplies of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that the UK also uses in its vaccination program come from Belgium.

Since its launch in December, the UK health service has overseen the vaccination of more than 25 million people with a first dose of vaccine. More than 1.7 million people now have a second dose of the two-shot vaccines currently used in the UK, according to government data.

According to the BBC, the National Health Service had already warned of a reduction in supply to England “in April in a letter to local health organizations”.

But the government has said it is still on track to offer all over-50s a first dose of vaccine before April 15 and all adults in the UK a first dose in late July.

“The vaccination program will continue in the coming weeks and more people will continue to receive first and second doses,” a spokesman for the Department of Health and Welfare said in a statement Wednesday night.

“As has been the case since the program began, the number of vaccines given over time will vary due to supply.”

World health experts have long warned that vaccines, their supplies and distribution, would be a ripe zone for discord between countries and regions.

Dr. Margaret Harris, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, told CNBC on Thursday that the public health agency had known since the beginning of the pandemic that vaccine distribution would be a “major problem.”

“In previous outbreaks, this is exactly what has happened. Some groups and countries have had good access (to vaccines) and have even had excessive access, while many countries have been left with nothing. We saw it. during the 2009 flu pandemic, “he told CNBC’s” Squawk Box Europe. “

“We really encourage manufacturers to make arrangements to allow more manufacturers around the world to really increase supply,” he said.

The UK vaccination program has been its 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 reported, and has recorded more than 126,000 deaths to date, according to Johns Hopkins University.