HANCOCK: NOW LET’S HIT 32 M JABS TARGET
Britain’s ‘extraordinary feat’ boosts hopes of lockdown easing from March 8
MATT Hancock has announced an ambitious new mission in the Covid fight – to vaccinate everyone at risk by the end ofApril. The Health Secretary vowed to jab another 17 million people in 10 weeks as the UK hit its target of 15 million shots – a day early.
The massive leap towards relaxing lockdown was praised by Boris Johnson yesterday as an “extraordinary feat”. He
said the jabs to date were enough to inoculate the four most at risk groups – which is key to schools reopening next month.
Mr Hancock pledged: “We still have a long way to go and we will not rest until we have offered a vaccine to the entire adult population.”
Achieving the initial 15 million jabs target heaps pressure on the Prime Minister to accelerate the timetable for loosening restrictions.
Mr Johnson said that the Government’s focus now was on vaccinating the over-50s, and any remaining people deemed to be vulnerable, in the next few weeks.
That would mean 32 million would have been offered jabs by May – nearly half the population.
In a video message he said: “We have reached a significant milestone in the United Kingdom’s national vaccination programme”, in a “truly national UK-wide effort.
“We’ve done it together. And I want to thank each and every person who has helped make it happen. You can be incredibly proud of the part you’ve played.
“Thanks also to everyone who has had a jab so far, giving protection, not just to yourself, but also to your fellow citizens and to the NHS.”
Writing exclusively in the Daily Express, Mr Hancock called the vaccination programme one of the “most ambitious operations in the modern history of the UK.
“This has been an enormous year of sacrifice, and we should take nothing for granted. But the hard work is paying off with every single jab that we give.”
The 15 million total was passed after another 429,497 first vaccine doses were given in England in 24 hours, plus 2,186 second shots.
Teams in Scotland added 50,601, while Wales injected 22,555, taking the UK total to 15,058,859 people.
Carers will today be offered the chance to have their first-stage jab, alongside people with pertinent underlying health conditions and those aged 65 to 69.
The charity Carers UK said the invitation for an inoculation would give many unpaid helpers “a huge
sense of relief”. Meanwhile, Mr Johnson said the mass vaccination programme means the country can look forward with optimism.
He added: “We’ve still got a long way to go, and there will undoubtedly be bumps in the road.
“After all we’ve achieved, know we can go forward with great confidence.”
While the total of vaccinations soared, cases of coronavirus continued to fall.
There were 10,972 more cases reported yesterday, taking recorded I infections to just more than four million. Another 258 people died within 28 days of a positive Covid test, making the death toll by that measure 117,166.
The jabs priority list set out by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) includes nine categories. Highest priority went to care home residents and their carers, followed by people over the age of 80 and frontline health and social care staff.
The third priority group was people aged 75 and over, while the fourth group was those over the age of 70 and others deemed to be clinically extremely vulnerable.
Sir Simon Stevens, NHS chief executive, said: “Hitting this [15 million] milestone just ten weeks after the NHS made history by delivering the first Covid vaccination outside of a clinical trial is a remarkable shared achievement.”
He added that the success so far of the mass vaccination programme was “down to the skill, care, and downright hard work of our fantastic staff, supported by local communities, volunteers and the Armed Forces.
“It’s right to mark this successful first phase with a huge thank-you to everyone involved in this extraordinary team effort.” Dr
Nikki Kanani, medical director at NHS England, said: “We are all blown away. It is genuinely an inspiring achievement.”
Chris Hopson, chief executive of the NHS Providers organisation of health trusts, described beating the target of offering a vaccine to everyone in the four most vulnerable groups in England by February 15 as a “tremendous achievement”.
He said: “When Margaret Keenan became the first person in the world to receive the PfizerBioNTech vaccination outside a clinical trial on December 8, no one could have anticipated that within ten weeks, the UK would have made such huge strides in protecting the most vulnerable groups in the population.
“We owe much of this success to the role that trusts, working with colleagues in primary care and with the fantastic support of volunteers, have played in immunising so many people so efficiently.”
Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccine deployment minister, added that the Government would push on to ensure that every adult was offered a jab.
The 15 million target was set on January 4.
At that time Mr Johnson said it was expected that an initial dose would be offered to everyone in the four highest-priority groups, as identified by the JCVI, by the middle of February.
Mr Johnson said then: “If we succeed in vaccinating all those groups, we will have removed huge numbers of people from the path of the virus.”
He added: “And of course, that will eventually enable us to lift many of the restrictions we have endured for so long.”