Former prime minister Tony Blair today said the UK needs to dramatically accelerate its coronavirus vaccination programme in order to lift lockdown rules in the spring.
Claiming it s not complicated on live TV this morning as he launched a blue-print for improving the country s vaccine roll-out, Mr Blair suggested restrictions could ease significantly in February if the NHS scales up to millions of jabs every week.
As supplies flow into the country in the coming weeks, Mr Blair said, officials should strain every sinew to make sure every dose is used as soon as possible. He said there should be pop-up vaccine centres and mobile ones, that pharmacies should be used, and volunteers recruited en masse.
While vaccinations arr well underway in many countries, Australia s pharmaceutical authority is not expected to rule on drugs for a month and aims to administer the first doses by late March.
Tony Blair has said lockdown restrictions could ease “significantly in February” while more than half of the population could be vaccinated by late March under a plan set out by the former prime minister.
In a foreword to a new report, Mr Blair said the UK’s vaccination programme against Covid-19 needs to accelerate “dramatically” and said the Government should be working towards vaccinating five million people a week.
He told Good Morning Britain the new variant of coronavirus spreading rapidly “means we’ve got to alter our plans for vaccination”.
In his report, Mr Blair said by the week after next, AstraZeneca should be able to supply two million vaccines a week, while millions of doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab are already in the country.
The MHRA Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway is open for business
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) today, 1 January 2021, formally starts the Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway (ILAP).
From:
1 January 2021
The ambition of this new licensing and access pathway is to reduce the time to market for innovative medicines. The
ILAP combines the
MHRA’s globally recognised strengths of independence and high standards of quality, safety, and efficacy, with improved efficiency and flexibility, readying the
MHRA for a new era in medicines approvals in the UK.
Central to realising this ambition is how the
ILAP provides a single integrated platform for sustained collaborative working between the
New guidance and information for industry from the MHRA
Guidance for industry and organisations to follow from 1 January 2021.
From: Contents
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is the UK’s standalone medicines and medical devices regulator.
The below guidance should be followed from 1 January 2021. It replaces previously published guidance on what to do from the end of the transition period.
Guidance from NIBSC
As well as the below guidance, the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC), one of the three centres of the MHRA, has published on information for manufacturers of biological medicines.
Clinical trials Guidance