Britain to slow roll-out of vaccine over supply crunch

LONDON • Britain will have to slow its Covid-19 vaccine roll-out next month, owing to a supply crunch caused by a delay in a shipment of millions of AstraZeneca shots from India and the need to test the stability of an additional 1.7 million doses.

Supply constraints are the biggest threat to Britain's vaccine roll-out - currently the swiftest among the world's major economies - and health officials warned that the programme would face a significant reduction in supplies from March 29.

"It is true that in the short term, we're receiving fewer vaccines than we had planned for a week ago," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, adding that this was because of a delay in a shipment from India's Serum Institute and because a batch in Britain needed to be retested.

"As a result, we will receive slightly fewer vaccines in April than in March, but that is still more than we received in February, and the supply we do have will still enable us to hit the targets we have set."

Britain is using vaccines made by Pfizer and AstraZeneca, with 10 million doses of the 100 million ordered from AstraZeneca coming from the Serum Institute.

A Serum Institute spokesman said it had delivered five million doses to Britain a few weeks ago and would "try to supply more later, based on the current situation and requirement for the government immunisation programme in India".

Pressed on whether the Indian government had stopped exports of vaccine to Britain, Mr Johnson said: "No, no, there is a delay as there often is, for various technical reasons, but we hope to continue to work very closely with the Serum Institute."

Israel is the leader in vaccinating its population, followed by the United Arab Emirates, Chile and then Britain. And investors are watching closely to see which economies could recover first.

More than half of all adults in England have already had their first Covid-19 vaccine.

For Britain as a whole, just under half of adults have had their first dose.

While Britain tries to secure more vaccines, it is also facing growing anger from the European Union, which on Wednesday threatened to slap a ban on vaccine exports to the country.

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen should respect contract law and that Britain expected to get the deliveries it had ordered.

"There are very significant consequences to breaking contract law," Mr Hancock said.

He added that Britain expected doses of Moderna's coronavirus vaccine to arrive in the coming weeks.

REUTERS