10 | New Scientist | 16 January 2021THE UK’s race to vaccinate
13.9 million people in high-
priority groups against covid-
by 15 February is a Herculean
undertaking. “Unprecedented”
may have become an overused
word in the pandemic, but the size
and speed of the vaccine roll-out
warrants it, though it may still
be months before many people
receive a covid-19 vaccine.
The numbers tell the story.
Figures released on 11 January
showed that nearly 2.3 million
people in the UK have had a first
dose of one of the three vaccines
approved by the UK regulator. Onthat same day, the UK government
said it aims to be vaccinating at
least 2 million people a week in
England by the end of this month.
To reach the mid-February UK
target that prime minister Boris
Johnson announced on 4 January,
300,000 doses need to be given
a day, roughly the rate doses were
administered weekly at the end
of December and start of January.
“This is the biggest vaccine
programme ever that the UK has
had to roll out. It’s definitely new
territory,” says Doug Brown at the
British Society for Immunology.
The biggest previous vaccination
effort in the UK, for the flu,
normally sees around 9 million
people a year vaccinated. That
happens over five months starting
in September, with 60,000 doses
a day on average, peaking at about
150,000 a day in late October.
And there are key differences
between flu vaccines and covid-
ones, says Nilay Shah at Imperial
College London. The big one is that
flu vaccine manufacturers, and
the regulators who then do qualitycontrol on the batches of vaccines
after they are made, have about
five months to build up huge
stocks before they are used.
By contrast, covid-19 vaccine
makers are still in the start-up
phase. Mass production of the
active ingredients inside the
vaccines has been under way for
months, but companies don’t
start putting doses into vials until
closer to regulatory approval.
The other inherent hold-up in
the start-up phase is the quality
control process. In the UK, this
involves finished vaccines being
sent to a lab to check they have
enough of the active ingredient,
make sure there are no impurities,test for sterility, and more. The
sterility test alone takes at least
10 to 14 days, building in a lag.
UK health secretary Matt
Hancock has said the supply of the
doses from manufacturers is the
“rate-limiting step”. Brown agrees.
“The biggest bottleneck does seem
to be the vaccine supply issue,” he
says. Reports suggest a few million
doses are ready for use on priority
groups of the UK population, with
15 million more working their way
through the quality checks.
Sandy Douglas at the University
of Oxford, who led work to scale
up manufacture of the vaccine
Oxford created with AstraZeneca,
says flu vaccines are made with an
existing manufacturing process
with slight tweaks depending on
the strain of flu virus. For the
coronavirus, the processes are
new. “People need to understandhow difficult it is to get it going
for the first time,” he says.
Until this week, around
210 hospitals and 780 centres run
by family doctors were the main
sites for vaccinations in England,
but seven mass vaccination
centres have now opened. Across
the UK, a mix of sites will be used,
including hospitals, doctors’
surgeries and mobile units.
The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine
made in Belgium and the Oxford/
AstraZeneca vaccine made in the
UK were the first two approved for
use by the UK regulator, followed
on 8 January by the vaccine
created by US firm Moderna.
The European Union approved
Moderna’s vaccine on 6 January.
Some European countries, in
particular Belgium and France,
have come in for criticism for
bureaucratic delays to their
vaccine roll-outs after the Pfizer/
BioNTech vaccine was approved
on 21 December.
Israel, with its relatively small
population of 9 million, is the
world leader for number of doses
given, at 21.38 per 100 people,
although this doesn’t include the
5 million Palestinians in Gaza and
the West Bank. The UK is highest
in Europe, at 3.94 per 100 people,
according to figures collated by
Our World in Data on 12 January.
Israel has reportedly been able
to get six doses out of a Pfizer/
BioNTech vaccine vial rather than
the five each is meant to hold,
while the UK is only getting five.
The UK’s target will be a tough
challenge and opinions differ on
whether it can be met. “We will
struggle with the February target
because I think we will take at
least another three or four weeks
to get [to peak, steady production
of vaccines]”, says Shah. “I think
this is an achievable target,” says
Douglas, “but it still requires
everything to go smoothly.” ❚“ The supply of doses from
vaccine manufacturers
is the rate-limiting step
in vaccinating the public”
JOSEP
H^ PRE
ZIOSO/AFP/GET
TY
IMAGESA medical worker in
the US gets a dose of the
Pfizer/BioNTech vaccineNews Coronavirus
AnalysisAdam VaughanCan the UK hit its vaccine target?
The UK may struggle to vaccinate nearly 14 million people by mid-February
KIRST
Y^ O’CONNOR/AFP/GET
TYIM
AGES The Oxford/
AstraZeneca
vaccine is
one of three
approved for
use in the UK