- The U.K.’s medical regulator has approved Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for use as the country continues to struggle with the outbreak
- It’s Britain’s third vaccine to receive the go-ahead, following the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford University-AstraZeneca candidates
- A total of 17 million doses are currently on order, with deliveries to begin in the spring once Moderna has expanded its production capacity
- Britain is now looking to vaccinate around 15 million people – the elderly, the vulnerable and frontline workers – by mid-February
- Although Moderna’s vaccine will not help meet that target to begin with, it will help soften current supply constraints
The U.K.’s medical regulator has approved Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for use as the country continues to struggle with the outbreak.
It’s Britain’s third vaccine to receive the go-ahead, with the Pfizer-BioNTech candidate and another developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca already being rolled out.
While the Moderna shot will not play a part in the country’s first stage of the rollout, the health ministry said it has purchased an additional 10 million doses, taking its total to 17 million currently on order. Initial deliveries are expected to begin in the spring once Moderna has expanded its production capacity.
“We have already vaccinated nearly 1.5 million people across the U.K. and Moderna’s vaccine will allow us to accelerate our vaccination programme even further once doses become available from the spring,” health minister Matt Hancock said.
The U.K. was the first to approve the use of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, but has been slower to green-light Moderna’s, which has already been approved for use in the United States, Canada, the European Union and Israel.
Britain is now looking to vaccinate around 15 million people – the elderly, the vulnerable and frontline workers – by mid-February, in an effort to ease the latest round of sweeping lockdown measures that came after a major spike in daily cases to new records.
Although Moderna’s vaccine will not help meet that target, it will help soften supply constraints that Hancock has cited as being a limiting factor in the rollout.
“This is excellent news and a further crumb of comfort amid the huge levels of COVID-19 currently circulating around the U.K.,” said Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health at the University of Southampton.
“When these Moderna vaccines arrive, they will help to ease any bottlenecks or delays in the administration programme,” he added.