AstraZeneca set to supply 2 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine every week to UK: Report

After UK approved the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, reports have emerged stating that nearly two million doses of the coronavirus vaccine are set to deliver to the nation every week by the middle of January. Citing an unnamed member of the Oxford-AstraZeneca team, the Times reported that AstraZeneca expects to supply two million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, with up to 90% efficacy, by next week. The report also said that the plan is to eventually ‘build it up fairly’ by the third week of January.

In a bid to ramp-up its response to the record surge of coronavirus infections in the UK driven by the new COVID-19 variant, the British regulators had provided emergency use approval to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on December 30. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has reportedly ordered nearly 100 million doses fro the nation and has signed an agreement with the company which is hoping to supply millions of doses in the first quarter of 2021 itself. The first vaccinations of the second vaccine approved in Britain, are reportedly set to begin this year.

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This came after an independent analysis published in The Lancet even confirmed the Oxford-AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective based on the phase 3 data of a clinical trial. It is the second vaccine to be approved in the UK after it became the world’s first country to approve the vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech in December.

More than 600,000 people in the UK have already been administered with it since Margaret Keenan became the first in the world to get the vaccine outside of clinical trial volunteers.

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AstraZeneca CEO on UK approval

Following the approval of UK, AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said, "Today is an important day for millions of people in the U.K. who will get access to this new vaccine. It has been shown to be effective, well-tolerated, simple to administer and is supplied by AstraZeneca at no profit. We would like to thank our many colleagues at AstraZeneca, Oxford University, the UK government and the tens of thousands of clinical trial participants."

Meanwhile, the Serum Institute of India has already produced nearly 50 million dosages of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine labelled as 'Covishield' and plans to ramp up production to 100 million by March, this year.

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