Britain to release third Moderna COVID vaccine in April

Brookline, MA.  - February 25: Dr. Marisa Tieger, a physician at Massachusetts Eye and East fills a needle with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccination clinic for Holocaust survivors and their families at the Israeli Kehillath Congregation on 25 February, 2021 in Brookline, Massachusetts.  (Photo of staff by Matt Stone / MediaNews Group / Boston Herald)

The injection, which works in the same way as the Pfizer vaccine, uses synthetic messenger RNA technology that can be sent quickly to treat new mutations of a virus if necessary. Photo: Matt Stone / MediaNews Group / Boston Herald

The third US company Moderna (MRNA) coronavirus vaccine will be introduced in the UK from April and will be administered in Oxford / AstraZeneca (AZN.L) and Pfizer (PFE) / BioNtech (BNTX) injections. already offered on the NHS.

Culture secretary Oliver Dowden confirmed the news Sunday, adding that the UK vaccination program is still “on course.”

The first batch is expected to reach around 500,000 doses of the injection, Mail on Sunday reported. In total, Britain has prescribed 17 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, which has a 94% efficacy in trials.

Britain has also ordered 100 million doses of AztraZeneca and 40 million doses of the vaccine from US drug maker Pfizer and German biotechnology company BioNTech.

It has also ordered products from four other vaccine manufacturers as part of their inoculation program, 60 million doses each from Valneva (VLA.PA), Novavax (NVAX) and Sanofi (SAN.PA) and 30 million from Janssen ( JNJ).

Moderna injection, which works in a similar way to the Pfizer vaccine, uses synthetic messenger RNA technology that can be sent quickly to treat new mutations of a virus if necessary. Scientists have said the changes could be made in as little as six weeks.

It is presented in two photos, one month apart.

Experts have called the data Moderna “very promising” and the addition of the third injection will boost COVID ‘s declining UK chest stock.

“If we’ve caught up with everyone over 50 we want to reach out to, it makes sense to move on to our next age group, which is the 40 to 49 age group. -year, “said Dr. Anthony Harnden, vice chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI).

In November, the UK became the first country in the West to approve a coronavirus vaccine. To date nearly 30 million people in the UK have received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine, according to official data. However, just over 3 million have received a second injection.

COMMENT: The vaccine is expected to arrive in Moderna in April, a minister confirms

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said: “We have purchased 17m doses of the Moderna vaccine and the manufacturer is currently scaling up their European supply chain, which means that these doses would be available in spring 2021 in the UK at the earliest. “

SITE MORE: Vaccine series heats up as EU doubles threat of AstraZeneca export ban to UK

The UK has been locked in a row over vaccine delivery by the EU as the continent fights emerging diseases.

On Thursday, European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen warned that the bloc was “at the beginning of the third wave of the pandemic. ”

France has extended the lockout to three more regions – the Nievre, Rhone and Aube regions – with the government announcing the latest wave with a higher number of younger people being admitted to hospitals.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also called France a “high-risk COVID region.”

On Friday, France accused Britain of “blackmail” against the bloc over vaccine supply.

Last week, von der Leyen said it would suspend the export of coronavirus vaccines into Britain if Boris Johnson did not surrender AstraZeneca jabs made by Britain to the EU.

SITE MORE: France accuses UK of ‘blackmail’ over vaccine delivery as EU stops short of export ban

The news follows regulators in Britain and the EU taking the green light to COVID’s 20-second rapid testing on Friday to help accelerate testing capacity and support the travel sector as economies open up. -rithist.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has agreed to register the fully recyclable product, which is supplied by London-based company Histate.

The rapid test, called Virolens, was piloted at Heathrow Airport and uses swabs of the cheeks instead of through the nose and tonsils.

The company said it hoped to spread more widely over the coming months after tests showed the test had a 98.1% sensitivity, meaning it would return only a small number of false negatives, and a 99.7% specificity. , means very few things wrong.

Histate said the results are the “lowest baseline,” and could be more accurate.

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