Today in the House of Commons, Munira asked Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock MP, on the availability of Coronavirus vaccinations.
The Government were hopeful about lifting restrictions by the end of the Spring, but in order to reach this target, huge quantities of the vaccination must be supplied.
Speaking in the Chamber, Munira said:
“Thank you very much Mr. Speaker. Can I also start by saying what a joyful moment it was this morning to see those first vaccinations and thanks to everybody who’s been involved in making this happen.
I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s optimism about our summer holidays next year, however I would gently point out we’ve seen some setbacks from some of the manufacturers in terms of when the doses of vaccines will be delivered, both with Pfizer and AstraZeneca, apparently it’ll be 3 million doses rather than I think 30 million that will be arriving by the end of the year as was originally forecast.
So could the Secretary of State say whether he still thinks it’s feasible that the most vulnerable will be vaccinated by the spring, and how many of those of us who are healthy under 50 year-olds might be vaccinated by the school summer holidays?”
In response, the Secretary of State said:
“I understand why the honourable lady and many others want to know the speed of the rollout.
Because we’re reliant on the manufacturing process, which is itself a difficult challenge, we can’t put figures on when that rollout will be.
But we hope that we’ll be able to lift the measures by the spring, and we hope that by next summer, we’ll all be having a much more normal summer, but I don’t want to put much more detail on it than that, and I can’t put more in terms of the numbers because there are so many contingencies that mean what we can be sure of, and what we can work to, and plan to is for the NHS to be able to deliver the rollout at the speed at which the manufacturers can manufacture.”