UK to Spend 3.7 Billion Pounds on Vaccines and Will Take Liability for Claims

Britain has agreed to spend 3.7 billion pounds on Covid-19 vaccines and in most cases will bear the liability if claims are made against the pharmaceutical companies involved.

The British government has agreed supply deals for 357 million doses of seven different candidate shots, but has not gone into detail about how much it has spent or indemnity agreements, citing commercial confidentiality around the contracts.

The government had signed firm deals for five of the candidates, including the Pfizer/BioNTech shot which has already been approved and is being rolled out, as well as those developed by Oxford/AstraZeneca, France's Valneva, Novavax and Moderna.

Britain also has deals in principle for Sanofi/GlaxoSmithKline's shot as well as Johnson & Johnson's candidate.

 The government has invested in the development and clinical trials of some of the vaccines it has agreed supply deals for, and agreed to indemnify the firms against liability.

Those agreements mean that in four of the five finalised contracts, there was no cap on how much the government could pay if there is a successful claim against one of the companies, the report said.

 Only one of the contracts provides for a full refund of the upfront payment if the vaccine fails to achieve regulatory approval.

In all, the total cost of purchasing and deploying vaccines is uncertain, but estimated that it could cost up to 11.7 billion pounds.