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LONDON, March 30 (Reuters) - Britain will focus on
vaccinating the whole of its adult population before it can to
provide any surplus shots to other countries such as its close
neighbour Ireland, British business minister Kwasi Kwarteng said
on Tuesday.
More than 30 million Britons have received their first
COVID-19 shots in the fastest vaccine rollout in Europe, with
the aim of offering shots to all adults by the end of July.
However, Britain has found itself involved in a public spat
with the European Union, where the vaccination programme has
been much slower, over the supply of doses.
"I think our focus has to be to try and keep Britain safe,
we want to work cooperatively as well with other countries but
the main priority is to get the vaccine rollout," Kwarteng told
Sky News.
He said Britain was working with European nations to try to
ensure their populations were vaccinated, and that it was not "a
competitive situation".
However, asked if Britain might be able to help out Ireland,
he said: "If there are surplus vaccine doses then we can share
them but there are no surpluses at the moment, we have still got
a huge number to vaccinate."
Britain has agreed deals to buy tens of millions of shots
from a number of suppliers and on Monday GlaxoSmithKline
announced details of plans for the final part of the
manufacturing process for up to 60 million doses of Novavax's
vaccine for use in Britain.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is one of 23 leaders
who on Tuesday backed an idea to create an international treaty
to help the world work together to deal with future health
emergencies.
"Today we've got a crisis upon us, and it's absolutely right
that we should be focused on trying to deal with that in our own
country and keeping our people safe, so that we can get back to
a normal way of life," Kwarteng said.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Michael Holden, editing by
Estelle Shirbon and Kate Holton)