Delay In Vaccine Shipment From Serum Institute, "Technical Reasons": UK

Supply constraints are the biggest threat to Britain's vaccine rollout - currently the swiftest among the world's major economies - and health officials warned that the programme would face a significant reduction in supplies from March 29.

Britain will have to slow its COVID-19 vaccine rollout next month due to a supply crunch caused by a delay in a shipment of millions of AstraZeneca shots from India and the need to test the stability of an additional 1.7 million doses. Supply constraints are the biggest threat to Britain's vaccine rollout - currently the swiftest among the world's major economies - and health officials warned that the programme would face a significant reduction in supplies from March 29. "It is true that in the short term we're receiving fewer vaccines than we had planned for a week ago," Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a news conference, saying this was because of a delay in a shipment from India's Serum Institute and because a batch in the UK needed to be retested. "As a result, we will receive slightly fewer vaccines in April than in March, but that is still more than we received in February, and the supply we do have will still enable us to hit the targets we have set," he said.