VACCINES FOR OVER-70S START TODAY
‘Huge progress’ says PM with 140 jabs every minute and all adults to get them by autumn
OVER-70s will be offered their Covid jabs from today as the UK vaccination rollout accelerates.
Millions more clinically vulnerable shielders could now also get their call-up.
Boris Johnson said 140 injections are being administered a minute – and that will rise with today’s opening of 10 new hubs.
All adults will be offered the vaccine by autumn, possibly even summer, insiders said.
The Prime Minister
praised the “huge progress” made in the country’s battle against coronavirus.
He said: “Today is a significant milestone in our vaccination programme as we open it up to millions more people who are most at risk from Covid.
“We are now delivering the vaccine at a rate of 140 jabs a minute and I want to thank everyone involved in this national effort.
“We have a long way to go and there will doubtless be challenges ahead.
“But by working together we are making huge progress in our fight against this virus.”
By Saturday night 3,857,266 people had received at least their first dose. Some over-70s have already had theirs but the big push starts today as the new hubs open.
There are around nine million in that age group in the UK.
Protected
The estimated 2.2 million people that are clinically extremely vulnerable to the disease will also be able to get inoculated as the NHS begins the next phase of the rollout.
The health service has so far been working to vaccinate care home residents and staff, the over-80s and frontline healthcare workers.
By yesterday, more than half of all over-80s had already been protected.
The programme is going so well it has raised hopes in Whitehall that every adult could be offered the jab by July.
Some 298,087 doses were given in the UK yesterday. But the daily figure could reach almost 400,000 today with the new jab sites.
The centres are in Dorset, Somerset, Lancashire, Berkshire, Norfolk, Essex, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, York and north London. NHS England said they will each be able to administer thousands of vaccines every day.
The bases will join the existing seven hubs which were opened earlier this month.
In addition to the mass vaccination centres, there are around 1,000 GP-led surgeries and more than 250 hospitals providing the jabs. Some 200 community pharmacies are also due to help over the next fortnight, including high street chemists such as Boots and Superdrug
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the plan was still to vaccinate 15 million people by mid-February, followed by 17 million in the spring. He said: “Now that more than half of all over-80s have had their jab, we can begin vaccinating the next most vulnerable groups. We are working day and night to make sure everyone who is 70 and over, our health and social care workers and the clinically extremely vulnerable are offered the vaccine by the middle of February.
“Our NHS heroes are making huge strides in making this happen.
“This measure does not mean our focus on getting care homes, healthcare staff and those aged 80 and over vaccinated is wavering.
“It will remain our utmost priority over the coming weeks to reach the rest of these groups.”
The announcement comes as figures show that the rate of coronavirus infections continues to slow, with the number of new cases down more than a fifth from last week.
The latest data shows that 671 Covid-related deaths were recorded yesterday. And hospital admissions are still rising.
NHS England’s chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said: “The facts are very clear and I’m not going to sugar-coat them.
“Hospitals are under extreme pressure and staff are under extreme pressure.
“Since Christmas Day we’ve seen another 15,000 increase in the inpatients in hospitals across England. That’s the equivalent of filling 30 hospitals full of coronavirus patients.
“Staggeringly, every 30 seconds across England another patient is being admitted to hospital with coronavirus.” Sir Simon said people are being
vaccinated four times faster than new cases of the virus are being detected.
He said some hospitals would open for inoculations 24 hours a day, seven days a week on a trial basis in the next 10 days.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the UK was making “good progress” in ensuring every adult was offered a jab by September.
He added: “If it can be done more swiftly, that’s a bonus.”
The UK’s bug-fighting power was dealt another boost yesterday after the boss of a vaccine production factory said it was on standby to tackle any future variants and produce jabs at breakneck speed. The £158million factory will open in Oxfordshire later this year with the capability of producing 70 million doses of an emergency vaccine.
Dr Matthew Duchars, chief executive of the Vaccines Manufacturing Innovation Centre, said: “We’ll be able to make 70 million doses within a four to five-month period, enough for everyone in the country, when we open late this year.
“New Covid variants are absolutely part of the thinking. We probably will need to make seasonal vaccine variants because there may well be mutations in the virus, as well as vaccines for other diseases. You never know what’s coming next.”
The centre is already helping to manufacture the Oxford vaccine by lending expertise and equipment to the AstraZeneca team and its partners.
Meanwhile, French drugs firm Valneva has claimed it is just “days away” from kick-starting manufacture of its new vaccine on British soil at a plant in Livingston, Scotland.
Valneva hopes its formula can start to be used in Britain between July and September, it was said.
●Official data and scientific estimates to be published this week will offer the strongest evidence yet that the tough lockdown restrictions have worked.
Cambridge University researchers believe the R infection rate may have dipped to as low as 0.6 in London and the South-east.
Public Health England revealed weekly Covid cases have fallen in every age group except the over-80s.
This is despite the spread of the highly infectious new variant first spotted in Kent, which officials feared could not be contained.