These essential components, needed to guarantee everyone is vaccinated against the disease, are in short supply including glass vials to store the medication.
Sources in the logistics and medical sectors claim other features the country is floundering with are refrigerated lorries to transport the drug and pallets to pack it, as well as PPE for medics who are administering it.
This comes despite Health Secretary Matt Hancock saying this month that a mass rollout of a vaccine could be seen in the early part of next year. However, a logistics expert working on the delivery of the Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG) told a news outlet that Downing Street has not contacted the research team or its manufacturing partner AstraZeneca.
Philip Ashton said he expected the Government to be working closely with them to ensure the supply chain procedures were in place should the possible cure get the green light in the coming months.
Philip Ashton, chief executive of logistics group 7Bridges said that he was not aware that the Government had spoken to the OVG about the logistics of getting the vaccine to the whole population yet.
He said that they may not get the mass vaccination on the timeline they think and that it was doable if the Government starts the planning right now and he said that they can expect frontline workers and high-risk populations to be vaccinated by the end of the year, but vaccinating the whole population would be a real challenge.
The logistics expert did not think that the United Kingdom had enough cold chain trucks used to ferry the vaccine and it’s been reported that the Oxford vaccine will need a controlled temperature of between 2C and 8C during transport or it will not survive.
Britain will need up to 120 million doses, it’s calculated to vaccinate the whole population and also have booster doses ready for those who require them.
Another unidentified source working with the OVG team said No 10 has not contacted them over the logistics of mass production. This comes after a government medical adviser suggested people in the United Kindom could wait two years before receiving the vaccine.
Professor Mark Woolhouse, of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), said that most of the people that he’s spoken to who are involved in vaccine development believe that they may have a vaccine in six months, but it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to roll it out in mass scale by that time.
And that it’s a problem because the UK is dependent on a certain type of glass which is only available in the EU and this may be hard to source after December when demand increases and people aren’t going to put up with being told what to do for much longer, so they want to hope they get a vaccine soon.
And if things persist like this, bad things could happen across the whole country because people are getting furious now and the chances are that by the time the so-called vaccine comes along, the virus will be gone – this really does enhance our confidence in the Government.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 