Vaccine firms hit back at ministers over shortage claims

Drug firms have hit back at Government claims of a Covid vaccine shortage as they insisted that millions of doses have been delivered to the NHS.

The health service is currently carrying out 250,000 vaccinations per week but needs to inoculate two million per week if the Government is to reach its target of easing restrictions by Easter.

Boris Johnson has said supply of the jabs is the "limiting factor", while the UK's four chief medical officers have warned that "vaccine shortage is a reality that cannot be wished away".

Both Pfizer and AstraZeneca, the two firms manufacturing vaccines, took issue with the Government's claims on Friday, insisting that there was no problem with supply.

Meanwhile, it emerged that India has stockpiled 50 million doses of the AstraZeneca jab, manufactured there under licence, raising questions about whether Britain could have had more supplies ready to go.

Retired doctors who have volunteered to join the army of people needed to administer the vaccines have complained about bureaucracy and being told to fill in as many as 21 forms.

The row over vaccine supply blew up after the Oxford University/AstraZeneca jab was approved for use on Wednesday, triggering a race to inoculate the entire country with the 100 million doses pre-ordered by ministers.

Labour has accused the Government of failing to put in place a proper rollout plan, and ministers' insistence that there was a shortage of supply went down badly with the vaccine suppliers, who said they were meeting the Government's schedule.

Pfizer said the number of doses it has now sent to the UK is "in the millions", and TheTelegraph understands that more than one million Pfizer jabs – as well as 530,000 doses of the Oxford jab – could be administered during the course of next week.

Senior Government sources said on Friday night that people would be vaccinated as quickly as jabs were delivered, and that there was "no limit" on the speed with which inoculations could be carried out.

Ministers privately hope that their target of vaccinating 30 million vulnerable people and health workers by Easter could be met ahead of schedule, but are reluctant to speculate because of previous false dawns.

AstraZeneca has 3.5 million doses in vials and another 15 million that can be bottled up and ready for use in a short period of time. Each batch needs to pass a 20-day sterility test, as well as randomised quality checks, before it can be used, meaning the 3.5 million doses will be staggered in their delivery.

The Pfizer jabs delivered to the UK include one million doses that were being held back as the second dose for those who have already had their first jab. Following a change in policy, they can now be given out as first doses as there will be a 12-week interval between doses rather than the original three-week interval.

Mr Johnson told a Downing Street press conference on Wednesday: "The rate-limiting factor at the moment, as they say, is supply not distribution."

The UK's four chief medical officers wrote to doctors on New Year's Eve, claiming "vaccine shortage is a reality that cannot be wished away" and justifying a new vaccination regime that has prompted the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of jabs.

In a separate statement, the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation (JCVI), which advises the Department of Health, said: "The rate of vaccine delivery in the UK is currently limited by vaccine supply rather than by workforce capacity."

NHS England also does not recognise a problem with vaccine supply, but starting the vaccination programme from scratch has limited its  distribution to 250,000 jabs a week. In total, just over a million people had been vaccinated in the UK.

A Whitehall source said the NHS had "never said it could deliver two million vaccinations a week from the start" and that supply was not an issue. The source said starting the roll-out from scratch would take time.

On Friday, Jonathan Ashworth, Labour's shadow health secretary, accused ministers of failing to put in place a proper rollout plan, saying: "Ministers have had months to prepare for this, and with the dangerous variation in the virus speeding up the spread it’s vital we start doing two million jabs a week now.

"Companies say they can make the doses available, so no more excuses – ministers need to get these life-saving injections rolled out ASAP."

Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of medicine at Oxford University, said: "We know the NHS can distribute massive amounts of easy to deliver vaccines, 20-30 million doses of flu vaccines every year in three months.

"I am not not sure why they could not do the same here with an easy to deploy vaccine like the AstraZeneca vaccine, which deploys just like flu."

The latest figures show NHS England is achieving 250,000 Covid-19 vaccines a week. In total, between December 8, when vaccinations began, and December 27, just under 525,000 people aged 80 or over have received a first Pfizer jab.

The chief medical officers said 30 million vulnerable people and health and social care workers needed to be vaccinated in phase one of the roll-out  and "a model where we can vaccinate twice the number of people in the next two to three months is obviously much more preferable in public health terms than one where we vaccinate half the number but with only slightly greater protection".

A Pfizer spokesman said: "The deliveries to the UK are on track and progressing according to our agreed schedule."