Coronavirus: Every UK adult could have both jabs by August, head of vaccine taskforce says

Clive Dix said new Covid vaccines will be approved ‘in the very near future’

Every adult in the United Kingdom could receive both doses of a Covid-19 jab as early as August, the head of the UK’s vaccine taskforce has said.

Clive Dix, who runs the unit tasked with developing and buying vaccines for the government, said the UK population could be fully vaccinated within the next six to seven months and that new jabs will be approved in the “very near future.”

“We are confident within the vaccine taskforce now that the supply we’re going to get will take to us to a position where we can vaccinate as many people as the UK wants to vaccinate.

“We’re probably talking August time or September time all done, maybe sooner if we need to,” Clive Dix told Sky News.

So far Britain has vaccinated more than 15 million people with a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, one of the fastest roll-outs in the world.

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The government has said that each of the top four priority groups has now be offered a jab and the next five priority groups started being offered vaccines this week, with more than a million letters sent out by GPs.

There were fears that vaccine supply issues could curtail the UK’s vaccine roll-out, but Mr Dix says the taskforce is confident Britain will have enough jabs to meet demand.

“The ones that are being rolled off the line at the moment, they are doing very well,” he added.

“Of course they could have a manufacturing problem, like you do with any manufacture of anything but with vaccines being more complicated, you could have a problem.

“But because we’ve taken a portfolio approach we’ve got other vaccines that are going to be approved in the very near future.

“And, once they’re approved, we’ve got those as back up. It’s a very low risk we wouldn’t have vaccine.”

The UK has ordered 407 million doses of vaccines, three of which - Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna - have already been approved by regulators.