(Adds background)
Jan 1 (Reuters) - About two million doses of COVID-19
vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca
are set to be supplied every week by the middle of January in
the United Kingdom, The Times reported.
AstraZeneca expects to supply two million doses of the
vaccine in total by next week, the newspaper reported, citing an
unnamed member of the Oxford-AstraZeneca team. "The plan is then
to build it up fairly rapidly - by the third week of January we
should get to two million a week," the report added.
The company was not immediately available to respond to a
Reuters request for comment.
The report comes after Britain on Wednesday approved the
Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, hoping that rapid action
will help it stem a record surge of infections driven by a
highly contagious form of the virus.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ordered 100 million doses
for the country as part of an agreement with the company. The
company had said it aims to supply millions of doses in the
first quarter, adding that first vaccinations are slated to
begin this year.
Britain, which has recorded more than 50,000 new daily cases
of COVID-19 for the last four days, is dealing with a rapid
spread of a much more infectious variant of the coronavirus. As
of Friday, the UK has recorded 53,285 new COVID-19 cases and 613
deaths.
(Reporting by Anirudh Saligrama in Bengaluru
Editing by Chris Reese)
Astrazeneca (AZN)