HANCOCK: WE ARE READY TO ROLL OUT VACCINE (So, how long before he buggers THIS up?)
THE good news is they have found a vaccine for COVID…
The bad news is that serial bungler Matt Hancock will be in charge of rolling it out.
The NHS is ready to start providing the new coronavirus vaccine “as fast as safely possible”, the health secretary said yesterday.
But as the beleaguered minister has already presided over PPE bungles and the test and trace fiasco, cynics wonder what spanner Hancock could throw into the works!
Asked whether it could be available by Christmas, he said that was “absolutely a possibility” – but he expected the mass roll-out “in the first part of next year”.
He also said vaccination clinics would be open seven days a week and he was giving GPs an extra £150million.
But he urged people to be patient.
“We just don’t know” how many people will need to be vaccinated before life can return to normal, Mr Hancock added.
He also said new rapid tests – which give results in less than an hour – will be made available across 66 local areas, after they were used in a mass testing trial in Liverpool.
It comes as figures showed the number of people dying continued to be above normal levels for this time of year, with 1,597 deaths mentioning COVID on the death certificate in the last week of October – up from 1,126 the week before.
On Monday, early results from the world’s first effective coronavirus vaccine showed it could prevent more than 90% of people from getting COVID.
The vaccine – called an RNA vaccine – has been developed by pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech and is one of 11 vaccines that are currently in the final stages of testing.
The companies now plan to apply for emergency approval to use the vaccine by the end of November – and a limited number of people may get the vaccine this year.
The UK has already ordered 40 million doses – enough to vaccinate up to 20 million people, as each person will need two doses for it to work effectively.
But the prime minister has sounded a note of caution.
Boris Johnson warned people not to “rely on this news as a solution” as it is still “very, very early days”.