Vaccinating the British population against the coronavirus will cost the United Kingdom nearly £ 12 billion, roughly £ 13 billion.
This has been indicated by the National Audit Office. It concerns the costs of purchasing, producing and administering the vaccines.
The estimates do not include costs for any multi-year vaccination programs in the future. The regulator also says there are still uncertainties around the forecast, depending on how vaccines pass testing and what it takes to produce them.
The agency also points to possible additional costs, because with the vaccine contracts a kind of legal protection clause has been agreed with pharmaceuticals against lawsuits and claims for negative side effects.
The government would then pay for such costs.
The United Kingdom is already vaccinating with the drug from pharmaceuticals Pfizer and BioNTech. Also, permanent contracts were signed for vaccines from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, plus those from the pharmaceutical companies Moderna, Novavax and Valneva.
