LONDON — Britain will focus on vaccinating the whole of its
adult population before it can to provide any surplus shots to other countries
such as its close neighbor Ireland, British Business Minister Kwasi Kwarteng
said on Tuesday.
اضافة اعلان
More than 30 million Britons have received their first
COVID-19 shots in the fastest vaccine rollout in Europe, with the aim of
offering shots to all adults by the end of July.
However, Britain has found itself involved in a public spat
with the European Union, where the vaccination program has been much slower,
over the supply of doses.
“I think our focus has to be to try and keep Britain safe,
we want to work cooperatively as well with other countries but the main
priority is to get the vaccine rollout,” Kwarteng told Sky News.
He said Britain was working with European nations to try to
ensure their populations were vaccinated, and that it was not “a competitive
situation”.
However, asked if Britain might be able to help out Ireland,
he said: “If there are surplus vaccine doses then we can share them but there
are no surpluses at the moment, we have still got a huge number to vaccinate.”
Britain has agreed deals to buy tens of millions of shots
from a number of suppliers and on Monday GlaxoSmithKline announced details of
plans for the final part of the manufacturing process for up to 60 million
doses of Novavax’s vaccine for use in Britain.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is one of
23 leaders who on Tuesday backed an idea to create an international treaty to
help the world work together to deal with future health emergencies.
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