PM happily gets AstraZeneca jab
BORIS JOHNSON received his first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine yesterday, as several European countries started inoculating their populations again in light of new assurances on the jab’s safety.
The Prime Minister received his vaccine in London yesterday, while countries including France, Germany and Italy restart their vaccine programmes with the AstraZeneca jab – reversing an earlier decision to suspend it over blood clot concerns.
It comes as new figures from the Office for National Statistics show around one in 340 people in private households in England had Covid-19 in the week to March 13, down from around one in 270 the week before.
In Wales, around one in 430 people are estimated to have had Covid-19 in the week to March 13 (down from one in 365), while the figure was one in 315 in Northern Ireland (similar to the week before) and around one in 275 in Scotland, up from one in 320. The current reproduction rate (R) for the UK is 0.6 to 0.9.
Other data shows the UK ended 2020 with one of the highest levels of excess mortality for people aged under 65 among countries in Europe.
Mr Johnson’s vaccination comes after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said the AstraZeneca vaccine was “safe and effective” and its benefits in preventing Covid-19 hospital admission and death greatly outweighed potential risks.
The EMA has, however, been unable to say definitively that the jab is not linked to “extremely rare” blood clots on the brain, of which there have been 18 reports among millions of people vaccinated.
The World Health Organisation and the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency have said that the jab is safe and have encouraged people to take up their vaccine appointments.
Mr Johnson, 56, told a Downing Street press conference on Thursday: “The Oxford jab is safe and the Pfizer jab is safe.
“The thing that isn’t safe is catching Covid, which is why it is so important that we all get our jabs as soon as our turn comes.”
Like Mr Johnson, French prime minister Jean Castex was expected to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine yesterday.
Earlier, a senior scientific adviser said the UK must keep the South African Covid-19 variant at bay as some European countries report a third wave of infections.
Professor Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London, who spurred the UK’s decision to go into lockdown last March, warned a group of European countries are seeing increasing levels of coronavirus cases.
“Perhaps more concern for the UK though is that some countries are notably seeing a significant fraction, 5-10% of cases, of the South African variant,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“When infection levels go up in France, 30,000 cases a day, that implies there’s at least 1,500-2,000 cases a day of the South African variant. That is the variant we really do want to keep out of the UK.”