UK secures deal for five million doses of Moderna coronavirus vaccine

The Health Secretary said the Covid-19 vaccines offer “candle of hope” for tackling the pandemic
April Roach @aprilroach2816 November 2020

The UK has ordered five million doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine that will be available from spring next year.

The Health Secretary revealed an “initial agreement” was secured today with the US firm Moderna, after preliminary trials showed the Covid-19 treatment to be 94.5 per cent effective

 Matt Hancock told a Downing Street press briefing: "This is another encouraging step forwards, although I stress that this is preliminary, the safety data is limited and their production facilities are not yet at scale.

“Should this latest vaccine be approved, the doses would be available from spring next year.”

The Health Secretary added: "While there is much uncertainty, we can see the candle of hope and we must do all that we can to nurture its flame.

"But we’re not there yet. Until the science can make us safe we must remain vigilant and keep following the rules that we know can keep this virus under control.”

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said the success of Moderna’s vaccine was “brilliant news".

Health Secretary Matt Hancock reveals the UK has ordered five million doses of the Moderna jab
PA

“It's the second penalty now - that's also gone into the back of the net, so we're starting to feel in a better position,” said England’s deputy chief medical officer.

Mr Hancock also revealed that two new mega-labs will open in the new year with a 600,000 daily capacity.

He said the labs will "represent a permanent part of the UK’s diagnostic industry".

When pressed about why the UK had ordered just five million doses of the Moderna jab, enough for 2.5 million people, the Health Secretary said: "It’s been criticial that we’ve been buying the vaccines that will first be available.”

Professor Van-Tam added that between the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccine, the UK has “over a 100 million doses on order”.

Mr Hancock also told the briefing that the Government hopes to replace the national lockdown with a tiered system but that assessments still needed to be made to ensure the system would be effective. 

But Public Health Adviser Dr Susan Hopkins warned that the tier system may need to be “strengthened” in order to get the UK through the winter months.

“We have recognised that the tiering has had a very different effect in each area of the country,” she said.

Dr Hopkins said tier 3 in the North West has led to cases declining but tier 2 seems to “hold in some areas and not so well in others.”

“We see very little effect from tier 1,” said Dr Hopkins. “We will have to think about strengthening them in the future to get us through the winter months.”

Interim data from the US firm Moderna suggests its jab works across all age groups, including the elderly.

Scientists said the news bodes well for other vaccines, with Oxford University and British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca due to report results from their own trials in the coming days.

The announcement comes one week after BioNTech and co-developers Pfizer revealed that their candidate had been found to be more than 90 per cent effective.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in