Coronavirus vaccine: Britain gets ready to administer vaccines before Christmas
1 min read . Updated: 20 Nov 2020, 01:40 PM IST
Premium- Hailing the news coming from major coronavirus vaccination studies, Britain Health Minister Matt Hancock has said that there are encouraging signs of hope on vaccines
- 'It's a big task but the health service is up to it,' the Britain Health Minister said
Britain Health Minister Matt Hancock on Friday said that the health service is getting plans in place for coronavirus vaccine programme as it hopes to start the Covid-19 vaccinations before Christmas.
Hailing the news coming from major coronavirus vaccination studies in the US and the UK, Hancock has said that there are encouraging signs of hope on vaccines, however, nothing is guaranteed as of now.
He added: "Obviously no Covid vaccination has been signed yet but there are encouraging signs of hope. And we heard again this week good news on the AstraZeneca vaccine and on the Pfizer vaccine as well."
"It's a big task but the health service is up to it," news agency Reuters quoted the Britain Health Minister as saying.
Hancock also said that the UK National Health Service is getting those plans in place to be able to run a mass Covid vaccination programme alongside the biggest flu vaccination programme in history.
Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine update
American pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc and its German partnet BioNTech's vaccines have lifted hopes for an end to the novel coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 56 million people and caused over 1.3 million deaths worldwide since the outbreak began.
Pfizer and BioNTech said they plan to submit data from the full phase 3 trial for scientific peer-review publication. The drugmakers expect to produce globally up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021 based on current projections.
An emergency use authorisation request for the coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech was expected to be filed with the FDA Friday, as per reports.
"Pfizer's partner BioNTech has announced that tomorrow, they intend to file for emergency use authorization at the FDA," AFP quoted health secretary Alex Azar as saying.
BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin had earlier said, "If all goes well I could imagine that we gain approval (from US FDA) in the second half of December and start deliveries before Christmas, but really only if all goes positively."
