Hancock: UK on track to meet priority jabs target
VACCINATION CENTRES SET TO BEGIN WORK AMID CONCERN OVER STRESS ON NHS
THE health secretary Matt Hancock has said he was confident that Covid-19 vaccination targets would be met, after the programme reached an average of 210,000 shots a day between last Thursday (7) and last Sunday (10).
“We’ve got a continued increase in the rate of vaccination. This is happening right across all four nations of the UK,” he said on Monday (11). He was speaking at a news conference about the government’s target of vaccinating 15 million of the elderly, vulnerable and frontline workers by mid-February.
“It means that we are on track to meet that target. It’s not going to be easy, but we are going to get there.”
Britain said it would ramp up its Covid-19 vaccination programme to at least two million shots a week in England by the end of this month, with the aim of immunising tens of millions of people by the spring.
The shot will be delivered at over 2,700 vaccination sites across England, the UK government said. That would put everybody within 10 miles of a centre or, for a small number of highly rural areas, the vaccine will be brought to them via mobile teams. The sites include football stadiums and a horse racing course, and are located in cities including Bristol, London, Newcastle and Manchester.
Among those who will be offered vaccinations as a matter of priority are all residents in a care home for older adults and their carers; all those who are 80 years of age and over, and frontline health and social care workers; all those 75 years of age and over; all those 70 years of age and over; as well as clinically extremely vulnerable individuals.
The expansion of the programme will also mean all adults will be offered a vaccine by the autumn, it said.
Hospitals and pharmacies are set to begin offering the vaccine later this week. Priority is being given to the elderly, care home residents and workers, the clinically extremely vulnerable, and health and social care staff.
The government has drafted in logistics experts from the army to help meet the mid-February target.
Last week saw the UK’s worst daily case numbers and death tolls since the start of the outbreak. More than 81,000 people have died and more than three million have tested positive for Covid-19.
Medical chiefs are racing to boost treatment capacity as hospitals risked being overwhelmed, while the government has launched a fresh publicity drive urging people to stay at home.
The government is also considering even tougher rules, which could include increasing the distance people need to stay apart in public.
Government minister Kit Malthouse said the situation was “very, very perilous” but not everyone was complying with stay-at-home orders.
“A small minority of people are flouting the rules and they are costing people their lives,” he told Sky News. “This virus is moving so quickly that the government is having to make very very agile decisions about the way we live our lives.”
The chief executive of the NHS, Simon Stevens, gave stark warnings of the mounting stress on hospitals.
“The pressures are real and they are growing,” he said, adding that public compliance with the lockdown and medical advice was vital in order “to kill the growth of infection”.
The NHS head said there were 50 per cent more Covid patients in hospitals now than during the April peak.
Some 10,000 more coronavirus patients have been hospitalised since December 25 alone, the equivalent of 20 acute-care hospitals.
“Staff are exhausted,” said Lindsey Izard, matron of the general intensive care unit at St George’s Hospital in London. “The worry is that we haven’t probably reached the peak yet.”
The sharp rise has forced hospital bosses to consider shifting some in-patients to beds in nursing homes or care homes, said Chris Hopson, the head of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals in England.
But the Department of Health and Social Care signalled possible relief by announcing that two “live-saving” Covid treatments would be made available for patients in intensive care.
The drugs – tocilizumab and sarilumab – have been shown to reduce risk of death by 24 per cent for critically ill patients, and cut the time spent in intensive care by up to 10 days, it said.