Tory MPs fear Hancock may miss jab target

TORY MPs accused Matt Hancock of playing down the Government’s vaccination ambitions yesterday.

The Health Secretary described the prospect of giving the jab to the most vulnerable by mid-February as a ‘best-case scenario’.

Many of his parliamentary colleagues were not reassured by his comments to them over Zoom yesterday morning.

One MP who referred to the call as ‘Hancock’s half-hour’ said: ‘He emphasised that the prospect of the vulnerable being vaccinated by mid-February was a best-case scenario.

‘It was heavily caveated. He set out plenty of reasons why it might not happen by then.

‘He left himself plenty of wriggle room. It was very much an aspiration and there were no guarantees. I fear that they

‘It’s the only chance we’ve got’

have not got the vaccine in sufficient quantities. He said two million doses of the Oxford vaccine would arrive this week for use next week. They should have been stockpiling. The rollout needs to happen as fast as possible. It’s the only chance we’ve got.’

A Department for Health source said: ‘As the Health Secretary said on the call, our goal is to have offered priority groups one to four their first dose by the middle of February. That is an ambitious goal but achievable.’

Yesterday, chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said it was ‘realistic but not easy’ to keep to the vaccine timetable.

‘In the case of the Pfizer vaccine, as I think is widely reported, it’s more difficult to handle because of the complicated cold chain model,’ he said. ‘We also, with both vaccines, wanted to be very careful in the first two or three days that we went a little bit slowly just in case there were some initial unexpected problems.’ Mr Johnson has said that 1.3 million people in the UK – including 1.1 million in England – have now had the jab. The figures includes 650,000 over-80s – or 23 per cent of that group.

‘That means nearly one-in-four of the most vulnerable groups will have in two to three weeks a significant degree of immunity,’ the PM said. But Tory MP David Davis said: ‘There’s not a hope in hell they’ll achieve this by mid-February. March is optimistic. I suspect it will be sometime in April. We need more vaccines to be rolled out.

‘Anyone who’s run a business would foresee the bottlenecks and issues with production.’