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

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.

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."