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Vaccine passports for foreign holidays ‘feasible’ but experts say issues remain
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summer holidays will be allowed. Speaking to BBC Breakfast, he said: “We cannot give guarantees – that is not how viruses work.
“Ultimately we want to open up society, the economy as much as we are able, but only on the condition it is safe to do so.”
Mr Johnson is set to ask the public for “one more heave” of lockdown when he announces his route to easing restrictions.
Professor Neil Ferguson, the senior scientist whose advice was key to taking the UK into lockdown last March, said new data on the effectiveness of vaccines was “looking promising”.
He suggested the UK could be some way back to normal by
May. He said: “It still may well be that... we’re in a very different country than we are today.”
And it emerged the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine no longer must be kept at ultra-low temperatures.
New stability data, which the firms have submitted to the US regulator, reportedly show the jab can be stored in normal medical freezer temperatures of -15C for up to two weeks.
The Government announced new infection rates are shrinking by between 3% and 6% per day.
It said a further 533 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Friday, bringing the UK total to 119,920.
A further 12,027 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus were identified in the UK yesterday, bringing the total to 4,095,269, with 16.8 million people having now received their first jab.
Independent SAGE scientists warned the PM not to relax restrictions without having a sustainable plan in place to drive down the spread of the virus.
They said a functioning test, trace and isolate system would still be needed and
HOPE Ferguson urged him to wait until the number of new confirmed cases was below 100 per 100,000 in all regions. Most recent data showed an average of 131 across the UK.
Professor Stephen Reicher, of St Andrews University, said: “If we want to open up and stay open, we need what has always been missing: a systematic strategy to drive infections down to a level where outbreaks can be dealt with by targeted local measures.
“Vaccination is clearly part of the story, but it is certainly not the whole story.”
The Department of Health dismissed claims people over 40 could have jabs as soon as March, with advisers set to propose vaccine rollouts remain by age, as “pure speculation”.