UK vaccine supply hit by India delivery delay

Britain is facing a squeeze on supply of COVID-19 vaccines next month in part due to a delay in a shipment from India’s Serum Institute that is making AstraZeneca’s shot, health minister Matt Hancock said on Thursday.

British health officials warned on Wednesday that the world’s fastest big economy roll-out of the vaccine would face a significant reduction in supplies from March 29, without initially specifying where the problems were.

“We have a delay in a scheduled arrival from the Serum Institute of India,” Hancock told lawmakers.

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

A spokesman for the Serum Institute said it had delivered 5 million doses to the UK a few weeks ago.

“And we will try to supply more later, based on the current situation and requirement for the Government immunisation programme in India,” he said.

Pfizer Inc and AstraZeneca Plc said their delivery schedules had not been impacted.

Hancock added that, separately, a batch of 1.7 million vaccine doses had been delayed as it had to be retested, without specifying the manufacturer.

“Events like this are to be expected in the manual in a manufacturing endeavour of this complexity,” Hancock said.

Hancock denied rumours that the delays would see no adults receive a first dose of the vaccine in April, but said it was important to make sure there was enough vaccine to give people a second dose within 12 weeks of their first.
LONDON (Reuters), 
18 March, 2021