The Government of Boris Johnson has confirmed this Sunday the purchase of 17 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine, which it hopes to begin distributing during the month of April. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Oliver Dowden, in his capacity as spokesman for Downing Street in the usual round with televisions that every Sunday makes a member of the Executive, has expressed his conviction that the objective of give a first injection to everyone over 50 by April 15.
Despite the current tensions with the European Commission, and the decrease in the production rate of the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, the Johnson government ensures that the second doses committed are not in danger. Downing Street bet, at the beginning of its vaccination campaign, to vaccinate as many people as possible. To that end, it extended the interval between the first and second injections from 10 to 12 weeks, despite the fact that, in the case of the Pfizer drug, the manufacturer insisted on respecting the 21-day period between doses. With more than 30 million people already vaccinated, the Government has slowed down the pace of the campaign (it gave almost 900,000 injections in a single day), to ensure sufficient supplies to citizens who should already receive the second shot.
The British drug regulator (MHRA) already gave the green light to Moderna’s vaccine last January. Using technology similar to Pfizer’s, the drug’s proven efficacy is 94%. The Johnson government has also ordered doses to four more laboratories: Valneva (60 million), Novavax (60 million), Sanofi (60 million) and Janssen (30 million).
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