15M JABS TO FREEDOM
As upbeat Rishi Sunak hails a ‘bold new era’ for Britain, and with Oxford vaccine due to be rolled out in days, at last a clear route to end of lockdowns...
And we’ve done nearly one million already!
BRITAIN could be free of tight Covid restrictions by the end of February, after Ministers pinpointed the 15 million people who would need vaccinations to end the cycles of crippling lockdowns.
With the ‘ game-changing’ Oxford jab expected to be approved within days, the UK Government hopes that enough doses will soon be available to inoculate those most vulnerable to coronavirus within weeks.
Writing in today’s Mail on Sunday, Chancellor Rishi Sunak says the Covid breakthroughs – combined with the newly minted postBrexit trade deal with the EU – signalled an optimistic new era for the UK.
Hailing the ‘early roll-out of vaccines and the incredible work of our scientists and NHS’, Mr Sunak pledges that next year will
be the first in a ‘new era of global Britain’. He also hopes to consign the rancour of the Brexit feuds to history, writing: ‘In 2021 we won’t be Remainers or Leavers – only believers in Britain.’
The Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency could authorise the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca as early as Hogmanay.
Britain has an advance order for 100million doses of this jab, to join a further 40million doses of the approved Pfizer vaccine which are already being rolled out.
Boris Johnson said last week that 800,000 vaccinations had been administered so far.
UK Government sources say that between 12million and 15million people have been identified as likely to require hospital treatment if they contract coronavirus, or be at risk of dying from it.
Once this group has received the vaccine – which some officials hope could be achieved by the end of February – then the NHS would no longer be at risk of being overwhelmed if the virus spread through the greater population.
That would remove the main argument for shutting the economy at a stroke.
A source said: ‘The path to liberation is finally becoming clear.’
This newspaper also understands that the
‘This would remove at a stroke the argument for lockdowns’
Government is examining the possibility of accelerating the vaccination programme by giving just single rather than double doses.
The plans emerged as:
● UK Ministers privately admitted concern about the ‘theoretical possibility’ that a virulent new South African strain of the virus could render the vaccines less effective;
● Infections linked to the mutant strain previously found in London and the South-East of England were detected in Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, linked to people who had travelled from the UK;
● It was announced that a new antibody treatment with the potential to give instant immunity after exposure to coronavirus was being trialled by British scientists;
● A Mail on Sunday poll found that 85 per cent of people obeyed the tighter Christmas restrictions, and nearly three-quarters agreed with the decision to ban family mixing;
● There were 1,100 new Covid cases in Scotland yesterday, with another 34,693 across the UK. Scottish figures for deaths, hospital admissions and intensive care cases will be updated on Tuesday;
● Scotland’s high streets were deserted as the mainland was plunged into Level 4, with shoppers missing out on the Boxing Day sales in another blow for the battered retail sector;
● Former Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood called on the UK Government to deploy troops to carry out tests on pupils south of the Border so that more schools can remain open next month;
● More than 8,000 lorry drivers who had been stuck in Kent since Christmas Eve crossed to France after the Army helped to organise a mass testing programme.
The first public Pfizer vaccine was given to British patient Margaret Keenan, 91, earlier this month, but the Oxford vaccine is regarded as the game-changer because it is cheaper and easier to distribute.
The new jab can be stored at normal fridge temperatures rather than the minus 70C required for Pfizer’s vaccine.
Football stadiums, conference centres and racecourses are expected to become makeshift vaccination hubs within days of the regulator granting approval.
The idea of administering one jab rather than two, as former Prime Minister Tony Blair called for last week to accelerate the programme, also gained support yesterday.
Pfizer says two doses of its jab
Labour rebels fear ‘Brexit blood on our hands’
are necessary to ‘ provide the maximum protection’. But Professor David Salisbury, who was in charge of immunisation at the Department of Health until 2003, has also supported the idea of a single dose.
‘You give one dose you get 91 per cent [protection]. You give two doses and you get 95 per cent,’ he said. ‘You are only gaining 4 per cent for giving the second dose.’
Mr Sunak’s vision of a ‘new era’ for Britain as it finally emerges from the EU and, eventually, from the coronavirus crisis, reflects the desire among ambitious Ministers to take credit for the nation’s recovery.
Mr Sunak has been one of the leading anti-lockdown voices in Cabinet, appalled at the multibillion-pound cost of shutting the economy for months at a time.
His ruinously expensive furlough scheme for workers is due to run until April.
But colleagues of Health Secretary Matt Hancock, one of the leading pro-lockdown ‘ doves’, also believe that he is now preparing to change his position – and try to claim credit for the vaccine programme which could ‘liberate’ the population from the misery of endless confinements.
Mr Johnson’s chief Brexit negotiator Lord Frost echoed Mr Sunak’s clarion call about the twin boosts of a vaccine and the UK’s new trade deal with the EU, saying that the country – which yesterday became the world’s fifth-largest economy after overtaking India – stood at ‘the beginning of a moment of national renewal’.
Meanwhile, sources told this newspaper how Lord Frost’s team succeeded in the trade talks by adopting the axiom of 19th Century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who once said of his diplomatic strategy that combined charm and menace: ‘With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and when I have to deal with a pirate, I try to be a pirate and a half.’
The powerful European Research Group of backbench Brexiteer Tory MPs indicated it would deliver its verdict on the deal on Tuesday – just 24 hours before the Commons debate on the deal.
ERG chairman Mark Francois said a last-minute decision was needed so they could carry out a line-by-line study of the deal.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he would back the deal in the Commons, but faced a rebellion by about 20 of his Europhile MPs who indicated that they would abstain or vote against the agreement because they didn’t want ‘Brexit blood on our hands’.
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, writing in today’s Mail on Sunday, told Mr Johnson that the Brexit ‘war is over’.