(Recasts with health minister, adds PM news conference
scheduled)
By Alistair Smout
LONDON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Britain's rollout of COVID-19
vaccines is being limited by the supply of shots, and the
government is working with both Pfizer and AstraZeneca
to increase supplies, health minister Matt Hancock said
on Thursday.
"The rate limiting step is the supply of vaccine, and we're
working with the companies, both Pfizer and of course
AstraZeneca, to increase the supply," Hancock told broadcasters.
"The manufacturers are doing a brilliant job, and they're
delivering to the schedule that's agreed, but that schedule is
the amount of vaccine that we have ... we expect to see that
amount of vaccine being delivered going up."
He spoke after the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca
and Oxford University was rolled out in doctors surgeries from
Thursday, part of an effort to vaccinate of the most vulnerable
within six weeks.
More than 1.3 million people in the United Kingdom have
received one shot of either AstraZeneca or Pfizer's COVID-19
vaccine.
Hancock said the aim was for most care home residents to be
offered a shot by the end of January, with 13 million people in
the top four priority cohorts reached by mid-February.
The government must ramp up shots to around 2 million a week
to hit its target. The top priority groups include care home
residents, the elderly, the clinically vulnerable, and frontline
health and social care workers.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that if the vaccine
rollout goes to plan, new lockdown measures introduced this week
could start to be eased in February. Johnson will give a news
conference later on Thursday.
AstraZeneca's vaccine was first deployed in hospitals on
Monday. It does not have the ultra-low temperature requirements
that Pfizer's does, making it easier to roll out.
Initial boxes of the Pfizer vaccine contained nearly 1,000
doses, but the NHS said that smaller boxes of Pfizer's vaccine
had also been approved for use that could be used in settings
like care homes without wasting doses.
(Reporting by Alistair Smout; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Jane
Merriman)