AstraZeneca to release 2m vaccine doses a week to UK by mid-Feb

ASTRAZENECA is scaling up releases of Covid-19 vaccine doses to the UK to the point where it expects to be providing 2 million a week by or before the middle of February, a top executive told lawmakers on Wednesday(13).

"We've released just over 1.1m doses, to date, and we are scaling up as we've said very rapidly. And this will happen imminently, to releasing 2m doses a week, we're absolutely on track to do that," said Tom Keith-Roach, president of AstraZeneca UK.

"We're scaling up to 2m a week imminently, and certainly we hope to be there on or before the middle of February," he said.

Meanwhile, the head of immunisation at Public Health England (PHE) on Wednesday said that it is possible to get an extra dose out of vials of AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine as well as the one made by Pfizer,

In December, the health service gave doctors advice that they could use extra doses of the Pfizer vaccine at their discretion if they could be extracted, and on Wednesday Dr Mary Ramsay said it was happening with AstraZeneca's shot too.

"We have been able to get more vaccine out of each vial, and that's happened for the Pfizer vaccine and it's also happening with the AstraZeneca vaccine. So that means overall, we've got more vaccines to go around," she told lawmakers, adding that PHE had bought the necessary needles "from the start".

"Really very early on we discovered that we're able to get more out of the vials, which is excellent news."