The report comes after Britain approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine
About two million doses of COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca are due to be delivered each week in mid-January in the UK, The Times reported.
AstraZeneca expects to supply two million doses of the vaccine in total next week, the newspaper reported, citing an unnamed member of the Oxford-AstraZeneca team. “The plan is to build it fairly quickly: by the third week of January we should reach two million a week,” the report adds.
The company was not immediately available to respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
The report comes after Britain approved the COVID-19 Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on Wednesday, in the hope that swift action will help curb a historic rise in infections caused by a highly contagious form of the virus.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ordered 100 million doses for the country as part of an agreement with the company. The company had said it aims to supply millions of doses during the first quarter, adding that the first vaccinations are scheduled to begin this year.
Britain, which has reported more than 50,000 new daily cases of COVID-19 over the past four days, is facing a rapid spread of a much more infectious variant of the coronavirus. As of Friday, the UK has registered 53,285 new cases of COVID-19 and 613 deaths.
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