Bimbowomxn wrote: Thu Dec 17, 2020 2:03 pm
Once the AZ vaccine is approved then we'll see the numbers upped a great deal.
Let’s hope so. Either way the first 4 million should have been speeded up, most of the country is now locked down again and there’s many business barely clinging on.
The bulk of the 4 million will not arrive until the end of the month - there's nothing that the UK government can do about that. Add to that both the results and approval process came through far more rapidly than expected, and the fact that the distribution process for this one is very different to the others. You ALWAYS start a widescale vaccination programme slowly just in case there are any other discoveries to be made (such as the allergy issue).
There is still a very strong chance that we will run out of stock before the rest of the first batch arrives, and then we actually have to be very careful to ensure that dose 2 is delivered inside the correct window. This is not a vaccine for rapid widespread deployment, and even just delivering it to the most serious at risk groups will take months in part due to the delivery schedules and manufacturing constraints from Pfizer