India is set to approve Astrazeneca vaccine today and has already stockpiled 50MILLLION doses – fifty times amount UK has ready
India is set to approve the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine today and has already stockpiled 50 million doses - which is 50 times the amount the UK has ready to go.
The coronavirus outbreak in India has so far been less severe in India than in other countries, with an current infection rate of 12 cases per million people compared to the UK's 633 per million.
But India's superior manufacturing capacity means that it has been able to produce far more of the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine in advance, and will soon start inoculating its population of 1.3billion people.
The UK has one million doses of the Astrazeneca vaccine ready to be delivered from tomorrow, with a further two million available by the middle of January.
But British officials have warned that that supply shortages of the Astrazeneca vaccine could last until spring, despite the company's assurances that it can produce 2million doses a week.
Professor Chris Whitty, England's chief medical officer, said in a letter with his counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: 'Currently the main barrier to this is vaccine availability, a global issue, and this will remain the case for several months and, importantly, through the critical winter period.'
India is set to approve the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine today and has already stockpiled 50 million doses which is 50 times the amount the UK has ready to go
Israel is set to run out of Pfizer/BioNTech doses amid fears that the slow pace of the vaccination programme and supply shortages will sabotage the global recovery
Top experts, including members of SAGE, have warned ministers they need to ramp up weekly vaccination rates sevenfold to 2million by mid-January to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed this winter. Currently about 280,000 Brits are being inoculated each week
A source has revealed that the jabs could start to be transported from cold storage to Indian states as early as tomorrow.
SII said in an email it would 'wait for the final approval to come' before commenting.
India's Central Drugs Standard Control Organization , whose experts were meeting for the second time this week, could also approve a vaccine locally developed by Bharat Biotech, two of the sources said on condition of anonymity.
'Both AstraZeneca and Bharat Biotech will get approval today,' said one of the sources. 'All preparations are on with today's date in mind.'
Britain's initial available doses of the Oxford vaccine fall significantly short of the number touted by the Government in recent months.
In May, officials suggested 30million doses of Oxford's jab would be ready by the end of the year and last month the UK's vaccine tsar toned the estimate down to 4million, citing manufacturing problems.
But the UK has ordered 100million doses in total and AstraZeneca has promised to deliver 2million a week by mid-January, raising hopes that 24million of the most vulnerable Britons could be immunised by Easter.
Britain will only have 530,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine at its disposal from Monday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock admitted today
In a bid to speed up the roll out, Britain's regulators are now recommending the jab is given in two doses three months apart, rather than over a four-week period, allowing millions more to be immunised over a shorter time period.
But ministers face the mammoth challenge of trying to rapidly ramp up vaccination capacity to curb the spread of a highly-infectious mutant strain racing across the country.
Only about 280,000 Brits are being inoculated against Covid each week and NHS workers — who play a critical role in administering the vaccines — are dealing with record numbers of hospital patients.