Mayor hits out over 'misleading' claims of Midlands vaccine shortage
West Midlands Mayor Andy Street has accused local politicians of "misleading the public" over vaccine shortage claims.
Birmingham City Council’s Labour leader Ian Ward said in a letter that the city had not received any stock of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and claimed current Pfizer stocks would run out tomorrow.
Signed by Hodge Hill Labour MP Liam Byrne and Sutton Coldfield’s Tory MP Andrew Mitchell, it also demanded “a realistic forecast” and assurances that supplies of vaccines will keep pace with demand.
It led to a furious response from Conservative Mr Street, who said it was "completely false" to suggest no vaccines would be available.
He said it was "deeply disappointing to see elected politicians misleading the public over the vaccine situation in Birmingham today, at a time when we should all be pulling together to get through this crisis".
The Mayor said: "New Pfizer vaccination stock has been ordered, and is in sufficient supply.
"It has always been the plan that University Hospitals Birmingham Trust would order more as they reached the end of current supplies, and there is no threat of them running out tomorrow."
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Mr Street added that he had personally spoken to Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi MP who had reassured him that the new AstraZeneca vaccine "will be arriving in the city tomorrow".
"As I hope is now clear, the idea that Birmingham will have no vaccines from tomorrow onwards is completely false," he said.
"Misinformation that causes undue concern is not what the public need in the middle of a pandemic."
Responding to the Mayor's comments, Mr Byrne said it was "not playing politics to ask for a plan".
Speaking at a briefing this afternoon, Boris Johnson said that by the end of the week there will be more than 1,000 GP-led sites providing vaccines, 233 hospital sites, seven giant vaccination centres and a first wave of 200 community pharmacies.
He said: "If all goes well, these together should have the capacity to deliver hundreds of thousands of vaccines per day by January 15, and it is our plan that everyone should have a vaccination available within a radius of 10 miles."
The PM added that he had "no doubt" that the country had enough supply to vaccinate everyone in the four priority groups by February 15.
A full vaccine deployment plan is due to be published on Monday.
