ONE of the latest batches of the coronavirus vaccine to arrive in Wales has failed testing.

The country was due to receive four batches of the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine this week, but first minister Mark Drakeford said that one of them failed testing.

“One of those batches has not come through the testing process and we will get it next week we’re told instead,” Mr Drakeford told Sky News.

“Everybody is working absolutely flat out from the manufacturers through to the people who do the vaccination at the practical end.

“When you’re trying to do everything on a massive scale and at such speed there are going to be moments where not everything goes according to plan.

“But we are assured we will get that supply in exchange for this week next week, and we will be able to use it all then.”

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Mr Drakeford believes that around 150,000 people would have been vaccinated by the end of Monday.

“We’re on track to vaccinate the top four priority groups by the middle of February, alongside the other UK nations.

“There’s a long way to go with vaccination. We’re going to be doing this for months and months, not just for weeks.

“So it’s very important to get all the infrastructure in place. We’ve expanded the number of mass vaccination centres.

“We’re going to use our dentists and our community pharmacists to go on increasing the volume of vaccination.

“At the moment, the thing that is limiting us is just volume of supply. We could vaccinate more people than we’ve got vaccine.

“But we also know that that, too, is going to increase rapidly over the coming weeks.”