Vaccine before Christmas ‘unlikely’, says Birmingham health chief
The man at the head of the Birmingham’s coronavirus fight says that a vaccine before Christmas is ‘highly unlikely’ – despite a hospital chief recently giving hope to thousands of people across the city.
Speaking on Tuesday at a cabinet meeting of Birmingham City Council, director of public health Dr Justin Varney said he had seen ‘no indication’ that a coronavirus vaccine would be available before Christmas.
Back at the start of the month Paul Jennings, chief executive of Birmingham and Solihull Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), said that a plan for vaccinations in Birmingham was currently being prepared, adding that there were ‘some possibilities’ that it could be made available before Christmas.
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This seemed to be supported by a leaked document which identified two vaccines, named Ambush and Triumph, which it was claimed were expected to be available this year.
However Dr Varney now appears to have now poured cold water onto the idea, telling the city council’s cabinet that while planning had begun around a potential future roll-out of the vaccine, he did not expect it to be before the new year.
He said: “We are unlikely to see a vaccine in this calendar year.
“The NHS has been modelling its approach, we would expect this. It’s a significant challenge to vaccinate the population so what the NHS was asked to do was look at how they would actually deliver a vaccine at scale, because it would mean significantly more people being vaccinated than the flu jab season.
“And they have been asked to do that in different ways, so if different groups were prioritised or different types of vaccine, number of doses, frequency of dose etc.
“So that’s some of the comments that you would have seen picked up in the media a couple of weeks ago. But there is nothing I am seeing at the moment to suggest that the vaccine will come out before the new year.”
