Unlike other vaccines, it can be stored in refrigerators rather than ultra-cold storage units. In addition, health officials earlier this month identified a new, possibly more easily spread version of the virus.
The Black Country and West Birmingham CCG is among several understood to have vowed to continue with the original three-week schedule, defying the new edict.
The UK has ordered 100 million doses from the manufacturer AstraZeneca - enough to vaccinate 50 million people.
Doctors have been instructed to delay patients' second dose by up to 12 weeks after the first one. Both vaccine treatments require two doses for full effectiveness.
Vaccine doses have been distributed to 142 hospitals, health care systems, federally qualified health centers and pharmacies in Pennsylvania, with another 58 locations expected to receive doses this week, the Department of Health said in a news release. He told reporters Wednesday, "The immediate urgency is for rapid and high levels of vaccine uptake". "More than 600,000 people in the United Kingdom have been vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech jab since Margaret Keenan became the first in the world to be given a Covid vaccine outside of a clinical trials".
Officials have said the vaccine will be made available "from next week", while Health Secretary Matt Hancock claimed the approval now offers "high confidence" the United Kingdom could "get out of this by spring".
Jeremy Farrar, director of health research foundation Wellcome, said a new trial might be needed to give clearer data on the best timing of a second dose.
Britain and South Africa in particular are grappling with more contagious variants of the coronavirus, which has already killed 1.7 million people around the world, sown chaos through the global economy and upended normal life for billions.
"From the data that was available, there was indication that the vaccine was effective in older people as well", he said. They have robust data and in India and the same vaccine is being developed by the Serum Institute of India.
AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot told BBC radio that Britain should be able to vaccinate tens of millions of people by the end of the first quarter.
"Additionally, we know from the vaccine clinical trials that it is going to take about 10 to 14 days to develop protection from the vaccine". He is chair of policy and communications for Britain's Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine.
This would cover the entire population when combined with the full order of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said. Over a dozen countries have already approved the vaccine for use, including Britain, Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. But none can be provided until approved by the WHO.
Hours later, Argentina became the second nation to approve the vaccine.
'We actually know what data they have been looking at, and here our perception of what is reasonable to approve differs quite markedly at present.
