Vaccine roll-out "like the tortoise and the hare," says Cranfield University expert

A supply chain expert from Cranfield School of Management has been asked to weigh in on which vaccine is likely to be used in UK first.

Speaking to The Guardian, Professor Richard Wilding OBE, professor of supply chain strategy at Cranfield School of Management, said: “It’s a bit like the tortoise and the hare."

“You could argue that the tortoise was the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, but it could be the overall winner in terms of the volumes that are going to go out, because it doesn’t face the logistical obstacles and challenges that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine does.

“The key thing is that the ‘time to market’ for Pfizer may be the quickest but the thing you need to consider is ‘time to volume’ – that is, getting and enabling mass vaccination. It may be the AstraZeneca vaccine being easier to manage within conventional supply chains may win out.”