“The speed of the vaccine programme is not affected by the decisions yesterday”
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said that the UK has “more than enough” Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to cover all under-30s after the news on Wednesday that this age group would no longer be offered the AstraZeneca jab.
Hancock also confirmed that the country is still on track to hit the government’s target of offering all adults their first jab by the end of July.
His words come in the aftermath of the announcement that under-30s would not be offered the AstraZeneca vaccine anymore because of the risk of very rare blood clots. The Health Secretary emphasised how rare these blood clots were, with the risk around four in a million, and that there is no evidence of them occurring after the second dose. Of the 10 million under-30s in the UK, 1.6 million have received a first dose of vaccine.
Speaking to Sky News, the Health Secretary said: “We have more than enough Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to cover all of the remaining 8.5 million people aged between 18 and 29 if necessary.
“It’s some time until we’ll get onto that cohort. We’ll make sure they have the option of having the Pfizer or Moderna jab if they want to.
“We have large numbers of jabs coming on stream. We have 40 million Pfizer jabs in production, we have 17 million Moderna jabs that are coming through.
“We’ve got more than enough jabs and we are on track to hit the target that we’ve set that we will ensure every adult in the UK is offered the jab by the end of July.”
He also added that there are hopes that three more vaccines will soon be able to be used across the UK. These are the jabs developed by Novavax, Valneva, and Johnson and Johnson.
“We are in good shape on the supply of future vaccines and we have the great news the we started the rollout of the Moderna vaccine,” Mr Hancock added.
“The vaccine programme is proceeding well. The speed of the vaccine programme is not affected by the decisions yesterday.
“You can see and be reassured by the fact we’re taking an abundance of caution and we’re making sure we roll this out in the safest way possible.”
