Booster jabs extended to beat Christmas lockdown
Urgent moves target all UK adults amid new Omicron variant threat
BOOSTER vaccinations are being urgently extended to all adults in the UK, in a bid to prevent a Christmas lockdown and see off a potential wave of infections caused by the new Covid variant.
All adults aged 18 to 39 will now be offered boosters, while severely immunosuppressed patients who have already received a third Covid vaccination will become eligible earlier.
The timescale has been cut from six months to three months from when patients received their second – or third – primary dose.
It means that many under-40s will be eligible for boosters ahead of Christmas, while many of those who received third doses, such as transplant and cancer patients, can get a booster from late December or January.
Children aged 12 to 15 will also be offered second Covid vaccinations.
It comes amid fears over the highly mutated new Omicron variant, which has been detected now in six patients in Lanarkshire and Greater Glasgow and Clyde.
Scottish Health Secretary Humza Yousaf welcomed the decision by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), adding that the Scottish Government will “seek to operationalise this advice as soon as we possibly can”.
Everyone over 40 is already eligible, and about 90 per cent of over-70s in Scotland have already received a booster.
Professor Jonathan Van-tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, said the booster campaign “has never been more vital than at this point in time”. He said: “We don’t know what’s going to happen next. The next three weeks are going to be weeks of scientific uncertainty.
“Whilst we wait for the mist to clear on what this concerning new variant actually means, there is no time to delay – it’s our opportunity to get ahead and vaccine boosting is the thing we can do most easily whilst we wait for that science mist to clear.”
He added that it was “pretty likely”, based on mutations, that Omicron will have some effect on vaccine efficacy, but that the biggest effect is likely to be on infection risk with “hopefully
smaller effects on severe disease”.
Professor Wei Shen Lim, chair of the Covid-19 group for the JCVI, said the large number of mutations on the Omicron variant compared to the original Wuhan strain was a cause for concern. It has 50 in total, included 30 on the spike protein which is targeted by Covid antibodies.
He said: “The larger the mismatch between vaccine and variant, the greater the likelihood that the level of protection provided by the vaccine will be lowered.
“From what we know of the Omicron variant so far, it may be that the vaccines we have at the moment may be less good than against the currently circulating Delta variant.”
Prof Lim stressed that even if protection against infection is reduced, boosters would still “raise level of immune response” across the population and that it was vital to roll them out as quickly as possible ahead of a “possible new variant wave of infection”.
Earlier, Nicola Sturgeon warned that Omicron represented the “most challenging development of the pandemic for quite some time”.
Four patients in Lanarkshire and two in Greater Glasgow and Clyde have tested positive for the variant, with the earliest confirmed case having tested positive on November 23.
Omicron is characterised by a marker known as an ‘S-gene dropout’, which is not present in the dominant Delta strain but was common to earlier variants such as the Alpha (Kent) strain.
Scotland’s chief medical officer, Dr Gregor Smith, said surveillance shows S-gene drop out cases “beginning to appear again” in Scotland more frequently from November 16 onwards, but stressed that contact tracing does not currently show any direct link to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
The vaccination status of Scotland’s six Omicron patients has not been disclosed on patient confidentiality grounds, but The Herald is aware that two cases so far identified in England involved patients recently returned from South Africa – one of whom was fully vaccinated and a second who was fully vaccinated but had also previously recovered from an infection caused by the Delta variant.
Ms Sturgeon urged the public to “significantly step up” compliance with existing measures such as face masks; to take up vaccines and boosters if eligible; and said that home working must be “maximised” by employers.
Anyone going Christmas shopping or mixing with others – in pubs, restaurants, or homes – should take a lateral flow test beforehand to “[cut] off any opportunities for the virus to spread”, she said.
Ms Sturgeon said she hoped that this would be enough to contain the virus and enable Scots to enjoy a “more normal” Christmas this year, but could not rule out further restrictions.
It came as hospitality trade bodies were called to an emergency meeting yesterday with Finance Secretary Kate Forbes and Scotland’s National Clinical Director, Jason Leitch.
Ms Sturgeon and her Welsh counterpart, Mark Drakeford, have written to the UK Government seeking assurances that the Treasury would fund business support measures again if necessary.
Asked whether this would encourage the Scottish Government to impose a short “circuit breaker” lockdown ahead of Christmas, Ms Sturgeon said: “I really hope we don’t have to do that.
“It is about making sure we have the assurance that should that prove necessary we’re not stopped from doing what is necessary in a public health sense by the lack of financial support.”
However, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there are currently no plans to restart furlough.
He said: “We think, based on the current limited restrictions we have put in place or are putting in place, we’re not planning to change our approach with regards to furlough.”
Downing Street has also rejected calls from Ms Sturgeon and Mr Drakeford to prolong self isolation for all overseas travellers arriving into the UK from non-red list countries.
As of 4am today, arrivals must take a PCR test on day two after entering the UK and self-isolate at home pending a negative result.
Ms Sturgeon and Mr Drakeford said the incubation period of the virus, which averages five days, meant isolation should extend until the result of a test taken on day eight. The PM’S spokesman said current measures were “proportionate”.
The most challenging development of the pandemic for some time