Now it’s the turn of the under-40s

THE vaccine rollout will extend to those aged 38 and 39 from today as the country remains on course to hit the July target of vaccinating all adults at least once.

Around a million people – including pregnant women – are due to receive a text allowing them to access the national booking service for Covid jabs.

Officials confirmed under- 40s should be offered an alternative to the Oxford jab, such as the Pfizer or Moderna ones, following its links to extremely rare blood clots.

It comes as the NHS announced 45 million Covid vaccines have now been given in England – the equivalent of 300,000 a day since the programme began on December 8.

Figures show 35,722,461 first doses have been given in the UK, with a further 18,438,532 second doses.

Nearly three- quarters of people aged between 40 and 49 have had their first dose, NHS England said, less than a fortnight after they were first offered a jab.

A study published in the British Medical Journal has also found that the UK was right to delay giving second doses so more people could have a first shot sooner.

The US study showed that deaths fell from 233 to 207 per 100,000 people if the second dose was delayed.

The experts, including from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, used a simulation model based on a ‘real-world’ population of 100,000 US adults.

Based on one dose preventing 80 per cent of deaths – which Public Health England data found earlier this week – they calculated the strategy could prevent between 47 and 26 deaths per 100,000 people.

Dr Peter English, a retired consultant in communicable disease control, said of concerns about the lack of evidence for delaying the second dose: ‘These concerns are misplaced. Everything we already knew about vaccines also tells us that a longer prime-boost interval enhances the breadth and depth of the immune response.’