Injection of openness

THE historic mass vaccination programme against Covid- 19 got under way last tuesday in a blaze of publicity when Margaret Keenan, a 90- year- old grandmother from Coventry, became the first person on the planet to be inoculated.

Touring TV studios, an emotional Matt Hancock said the breakthrough meant that, after an attritional nine months, this grim chapter would soon close. Britain was, finally, on the road to normal life.

Yet since V-Day was declared, the public has heard barely a peep from ministers about the immunisation drive.

Daily we are fed a gloomy diet of Covidrelated deaths and hospital admissions.

Wouldn’t it be heartening to learn that thousands more people were receiving their first jabs? But health chiefs are shrouding the numbers in secrecy. Why so coy?

Everyone accepts there will be teething problems delivering so many vaccinations.

From storage to large-scale distribution, it’s a monumental operation. But it can’t be rocket science to give a definitive answer as to how many people have had the shots.

Because of shameful ineptitude, the department has already bungled testing, PPE and protecting care homes during the pandemic. if ministers aren’t careful, the public might begin to fear that this crucial initiative is also being botched.

Given the vaccine is the only hope of ending this nightmare, long- suffering citizens – especially those whose jobs or businesses are dangling by a thread – should be told if the rollout is on target or not.

With lives and livelihoods at stake, that’s the least they deserve.