Britain’s drugs watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA), will clear the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine soon, possibly on December 28 and 29, Whitehall sources have tipped off several newspapers.

The front page lead story in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph summed up: “Green light for Oxford jab before new year.”

It added: “Mass vaccination programme poised to begin in January with 20m on course to be inoculated by the spring.”

The paper also said: “Authorisation by the MHRA will also give confidence to countries across the world. India has already manufactured more than 50 million of the AstraZeneca vaccines.”

In a recent email, Cyrus Poonawalla, of the Serum Institute of India, told a school contemporary: “I just wanted to share with you that….we are the front runners for the Oxford vaccine, i.e. the so-called Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, and have already manufactured 100 million doses as a humanitarian gesture in advance of licencing. We hope to get a pre-licensure for the product as an Epidemiological Emergency Use; the good news should follow in maximum two months. Don’t be surprised if our vaccine will be licenced in emergency use in the UK in case they run short of the product.”

The Daily Mail similarly reported: “Senior Whitehall sources are said to believe that the Medicines and Healthcare product Regulatory Agency (MHRA) will authorise the vaccine on December 28 or 29.”

“The latest positive sign comes after Prof. Sarah Gilbert, the lead researcher behind the new vaccine, said on Friday that she hoped the jab ‘isn’t too far off’ from being approved.”

Britain has already rolled out the Pfizer/BioNTech with jabs given to around 140,000 elderly people and health and care workers in the first seven days.

It has logistical problems, however, as explained on Saturday by Royal College of GPs chairman Dr Martin Marshall, who is also still a working GP in London.

“The vaccine is not stable if you don’t manage the temperatures really well,” he said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “It comes out of the freezer — the -70 degree C elsius temperatures — and is brought to general practice in normal fridges at 4-7 degrees.

“It then needs to be taken out of those fridges and transported in temperature-controlled boxes, in small packs into each individual care home. “That is carried out by either a doctor or a nurse into the care homes. There the vaccine will be reconstituted with saline, drawn up into individual syringes and then administered to the individual residents and their staff.”

In marked contrast, the Oxford vaccine can be transported and stored at domestic fridge temperature, 2-8 degree Celsius, making it much more suitable for a warm country like India, doctors say.

The Oxford vaccine will not come a moment too soon because parts of the UK, notably London, are in the grip of a mutant strain of the coronavirus which is proving to be much more infectious than the existing one.

Government scientists at the Porton Down laboratory in Wiltshire have confirmed ministers’ fears about it being far more infectious than the original strain of the virus.

Christmas has not been cancelled but with hospitals filling up rapidly once again with Covid patients, there is a distinct possibility that the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, may be forced to put the country into a third national lockdown before he flies to India to be the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations. Downing Street has informed Indian Tory groups that “because of the pandemic he will not be taking a (trade) delegation but going on his own with his personal staff”.

The Daily Express put a positive spin on Britain’s imminent departure from the EU by suggesting: “What a way to wave goodbye to Brussels! Boris nearing £100BN trade deal with India.”

This (over) optimistic assessment comes from an interview with “Gaurav Singh, founding partner at JPIN, India’s biggest investment incubator”, who told the paper that UK-India trade, currently worth £24 billion a year and responsible for 500,000 jobs in Britain, could be boosted by Brexit.

The Express said: “International Trade secretary Liz Truss has already sewn up deals worth almost £200billion – but Mr Singh, who describes India as a ‘21st century powerhouse’, said a wide-ranging agreement would be bigger than any agreed so far.”

Singh was quoted as saying: “It should easily be in tens of billions as a minimum. As high as £50-100 billion two way is easily achievable, given India was a top two foreign direct investment (FDI) source for the UK and the UK has been a top six investor into India. Both economies and job creation will prosper, especially as the UK has been a second home to many Indians for generations.

Any deals need to be truly two-way in nature.”