Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Reuters
Reuters
Business

UK speeding up vaccine batch approval as much as possible, official says

People queue to receive an injection of a COVID-19 vaccine at a NHS mass coronavirus vaccination centre in the Excel Centre in London, Britain January 11, 2021. Jeremy Selwyn/Pool via REUTERS

Britain has done what it can to speed up the approval of batches of COVID-19 vaccine but there is a limit to how quickly the process can be expedited, an official who has led the procurement of vaccines during the pandemic said on Monday.

There has been scrutiny on the amount of time it takes to approve batches of vaccine doses as Britain races to vaccinate the elderly and vulnerable by mid-February.

"You can't do those batch testing experiments, until you've got the final commercial batches to test," Kate Bingham, who had been chair of the UK Vaccines Taskforce, told lawmakers.

"We've absolutely compressed what we can but there is just a limit as to what can be done."

(Reporting by Alistair Smout. Editing by Andrew MacAskill)

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.