UK speeding up vaccine batch approval as much as possible, official says

LONDON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Britain has done what it can to
speed up the approval of batches of COVID-19 vaccine but there
is a limit to how quickly the process can be expedited, an
official who has led the procurement of vaccines during the
pandemic said on Monday.

There has been scrutiny on the amount of time it takes to
approve batches of vaccine doses as Britain races to vaccinate
the elderly and vulnerable by mid-February.

"You can't do those batch testing experiments, until you've
got the final commercial batches to test," Kate Bingham, who had
been chair of the UK Vaccines Taskforce, told lawmakers.

"We've absolutely compressed what we can but there is just a
limit as to what can be done."
(Reporting by Alistair Smout. Editing by Andrew MacAskill)