MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th December, 2020) The production of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, in the United Kingdom has been hit by manufacturing delays, Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
According to the news outlet, the UK government's vaccine task force said on Monday that only 4 million doses of the vaccine will be available this year, all imported from production facilities in the Netherlands and Germany. Initially, it was planned to have 30 million doses by year-end and manufacture all of them domestically.
"There have been some [UK manufacturing] challenges. That's why there is a little delay in the delivery of the doses," Ian McCubbin, the task force's manufacturing lead, said at a briefing on Monday, as quoted by the media outlet.
AstraZeneca, on its part, reportedly said that it was initially using a facility in continental Europe because it had booked capacity there, which it preferred "to use rather than waste," and not because of some difficulties at the UK's facilities.
According to McCubbin, the UK-made supplies are expected to begin in early 2021 and at least 80 million out of 100 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine ordered by the UK government will be produced in the country.
In November, the preliminary results of the third phase of clinical trials of the vaccine were announced. Researchers estimated the average vaccination efficacy at 70.4 percent, with a minimum efficacy of 62 percent and a maximum of 90 percent. Scientists were surprised that the effectiveness of the vaccine was higher when patients were first given half and then the full dose of the vaccine � in this case, the developers estimated the effectiveness of the vaccine at 90 percent. However, with two full doses, the efficacy was 62 percent.
