ONE IS NOT IMMUNE
SO GET THE JAB, QUEEN URGES THOSE STILL RELUCTANT TO BE VACCINATED
THE Queen has urged anyone hesitant about having a Covid-19 vaccine to roll up their sleeves and think of others – not themselves.
The 94-year-old, who had her first jab in January with the Duke of Edinburgh, said: ‘Once you’ve had the vaccine, you have a feeling of, you know, you’re protected which is, I think, very important.
‘I think the other thing is that it is difficult for people if they’ve never had a vaccine, but they ought to think about other people rather than themselves.’
During a video chat with rollout leaders, she was asked about her own jab and chuckled: ‘Well, as far as I can make out it was quite harmless. It was very quick. It didn’t hurt at all.’
She added: ‘I think it’s remarkable how quickly the whole thing has been done. So many people have had the vaccine already.’
The Queen was credited with boosting vaccine take-up in the 1950s by revealing her children had been inoculated against polio. Her support for Britain’s Covid jabs rollout came amid growing
concern over lower take-up by ethnic minorities. Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said up to 15 per cent of people were hesitant, and it ‘skews toward the black and Afro-Caribbean community’.
The rollout and effects of lockdown mean the risk of the NHS being overwhelmed within 21 days ‘has receded’, the UK’s four chief medical officers decided yesterday as they lowered the Covid alert level from highest level five to four.
Data yesterday showed 9,985 new infections and 323 deaths – the lowest Thursday total since October – as fatalities over seven days fell 30 per cent. Almost 449,000 first vaccine doses and a record 31,613 second doses were registered.
One in five adults under 70 in England has had at least one dose and the number could soar in April when supplies of a third vaccine – by US firm Moderna – arrive.
Yesterday, Moderna announced it had produced a tweaked vaccine specifically targeting the South African variant with trials starting soon.
But in Europe new rows hit the EU’s troubled programme, already criticised for ordering too few vaccines too late and undermined by French president Emmanuel Macron calling the Oxford/ AstraZeneca jab ‘quasi-ineffective’. German virologist Prof Thomas Mertens claimed his country was sitting on 1.2million unused Oxford doses because of low take-up.
Yesterday, despite admitting a third wave of Covid had arrived in Germany, chancellor Angela Merkel said that she could not have an Oxford jab to encourage others because she is 66.
Regulators there and in France only recommend it to under-65s, even though it can reduce hospitalisation by up to 94 per cent and the World Health Organization approved it for all ages. Dr Kai Kranich, from Red Cross, Saxony, said: ‘We have more vaccines than we have people. We have 1,000 appointments and maybe 50 people say no we don’t want this AZ vaccination.’ Only 4.2 per cent of the EU population has had a jab compared with 27 per cent in the UK. The rollout got another royal boost last night as it was revealed Sophie, Countess of Wessex, is among St John Ambulance volunteers working at a vaccination centre in south-west London.