UK government signs early access deals to secure 90 million Covid-19 vaccine doses

The UK government has signed partnerships with three pharmaceutical companies in a bid to secure early access to millions of potential Covid-19 vaccine doses.

Business secretary Alok Sharma announced that the government has signed deals with BioNTech, Pfzier and Valneva to secure up to 90 million doses of three potential vaccine candidates.

Specifically, Pfizer and BioNTech have agreed to supply 30 million doses of their BNT162, mRNA-based vaccine to the United Kingdom. The companies’ programme is evaluating four experimental vaccines, each of which uses messenger RNA (mRNA) to target the virus.

If successful, Pfizer and BioNTech expect to manufacture at least 100 million vaccine doses by the end of 2020 and are aiming to produce over 1.3 billion by the end of 2021.

The following 60 million doses are set to be delivered by specialty vaccine company Valneva, whose VLA2001 candidate is based on highly purified inactivated vaccine which targets the SARS-COV-2 virus. The company has signed an agreement in principle with the UK government to deliver up to 100 million doses in total – depending on whether Valneva’s vaccine is proven to be safe and effective.

The announcement follows a previous agreement signed between the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca in which the pharmaceutical company will deliver a total of 100 million doses of its ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine, if its proven safe and effective.

The government is also urging members of the public to volunteer for future vaccine studies by using its NHS Covid-19 vaccine research registry. The online service has been launched so members of the public can register their interest to participate in clinical trials. It’s hoped that this will enable large-scale vaccine studies to take place across the UK, with the government aiming to have up to 500,000 people signed up by October.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: “A safe and effective vaccine is our best hope of defeating coronavirus and returning to life as normal.

We have some of our best scientists and researchers working on this, but members of the public have a vital role to play too. So I urge everyone who can to back the national effort and sign up to the NHS Covid-19 vaccine research registry to help find a vaccine as soon as possible.

Every volunteer will be doing their bit towards finding a vaccine for Covid-19 that will have the potential to save millions of lives around the world and bring this pandemic to an end.”

Chair of the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce Kate Bingham welcomed the announcement but also urged people not to be over optimistic.

“The Vaccine Taskforce is investing in a diverse portfolio of vaccine candidates to maximise the chances of finding a vaccine quickly that meets the UK’s rigorous regulatory and safety standards. The fact that we have so many promising candidates already shows the unprecedented pace at which we are moving. But I urge against being complacent or over optimistic. The fact remains we may never get a vaccine and if we do get one, we have to be prepared that it may not be a vaccine which prevents getting the virus, but rather one that reduces symptoms,” Bingham said.

The government has stated that by securing early access to enough vaccine doses, it can aim to protect priority groups such as frontline health and social care workers, as well as those that are at increased risk of Covid-19.

For those who cannot receive vaccines, such as cancer and immunocompromised patients, the government has secured access to AstraZeneca’s treatments containing Covid-19 neutralising antibodies.