‘Hold steady, there’s more grief to come’
BORIS Johnson is urging Britons to hold firm amid lockdown rules after another record daily death toll.
And he warned last night: “There will be more to come.”
The Prime Minister described the latest death figures confirming a further 1,820 fatalities as “appalling”.
But he also insisted his plan to deliver vaccines to
14 million of the people most at risk by the middle of next month was “on track” – amid concerns about supplies.
Mr Johnson spoke out in a television interview in Downing Street following the publication of data showing the highest daily death toll for the second day in a row.
“These figures are appalling, and of course we think of the suffering that each one of those deaths represents to their families and to their friends,” Mr Johnson said.
“I’ve got to tell you, there will be more to come because what we’re seeing is the result of the wave of the new variant we saw just before Christmas.”
He added: “It’s true that it looks as though the rates of infection in the country overall may now be peaking or flattening, but they’re not flattening very fast… we must keep a grip on this.
“We must maintain discipline, formation, keep observing the lockdown.”
Mr Johnson warned: “We’re going absolutely as fast as we can and it is literally a race against time, a race to protect the elderly and the vulnerable in the context of what is still a very, very tough pandemic.
“There are still tough weeks to come.”
Earlier yesterday, at Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons, he told MPs his Government was on schedule to hit his target of inoculating 14 million people in the most vulnerable groups by the middle of next month.
But he admitted that meeting the milestone would be “very hard because of constraints on supply”.
Supplies of the vaccine from Pfizer will be lower this month and next as the drugs giant upgrades its Belgium factory – before then increasing production.
And ministers’ hopes for two million doses a week from AstraZeneca by the end of this month will not be realised until the middle of February.
Data yesterday showed a further 343,163 had received vaccines in the previous 24 hours, taking the total number of jabs to around 4.5 million.
Mr Johnson also said he was confident that new vaccines can be swiftly approved to tackle fresh mutations of the virus. “We have been talking intensively about that with the scientists,” he assured MPs.
‘We must be disciplined, keep observing the lockdown’