UK Minister for COVID Vaccine Deployment Nadhim Zahawi on Tuesday stated that he believes both AstraZeneca and Pfizer will deliver COVID-19 vaccines to the UK and the EU.
"I'm confident that they [AstraZeneca and Pfizer] will both deliver for us the quantities that we need to meet our mid-February target and of course beyond that", Zahawi told Sky News.
The statement comes as European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides has announced that the European Union wants pharmaceutical companies that produce vaccines against COVID-19 on its territory to provide full information regarding the export of the vaccines to third countries, including the UK, and intends to oblige manufacturers to notify the bloc in advance about their plans to export vaccines.
On 22 January, Kyriakides said British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca had announced delays in the delivery of vaccines against COVID-19 to the EU.
The bloc has an agreement with AstraZeneca for up to 400 million doses of its vaccine, which was developed in conjunction with Oxford University.
Besides AstraZeneca, another vaccine producer, Pfizer has announced production difficulties saying that it was delaying vaccine shipments for three to four weeks because of work to increase capacity at its Belgian processing plant.