15MILLION JABS BY FEBRUARY 15TH

HOW THE TARGET WILL BE MET

Boris Johnson has set the hugely ambitious target of offering vaccination to the UK’s 15 million most vulnerable people by February 15 – in 36 days. The latest figures, from Thursday, show the NHS had administered 1,468,000 vaccinations over 30 days, or 48,933 daily. The PM has vowed that this will rise to more than 200,000 a day by Friday. But to hit his 15 million target, the daily rate needs to be almost 347,000. Every day this is missed, the daily requirement goes up.

WHO IS FIRST IN LINE FOR THE JABS?

Those due to receive the jab in the next five weeks include: Care home residents, frontline NHS and social care workers, those aged 70-plus and those considered to be ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’. Of those who have died of Covid-19, 88 per cent are in these groups, All 420,000 elderly social care residents in England and Wales are at the front of the queue and should receive their vaccination by January 31. One in four people aged over 80 have received at least one dose.

THE STORY SO FAR

On December 8, Margaret Keenan, then 90, pictured, became the first person in the world outside clinical trials to be given the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Within a fortnight, an estimated 500,000 people had been given the jab, and the UK has ordered a total of 40 million doses.

Last Monday, Brian Pinker, 82, became the first patient to receive the ‘game-changing’ vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, which can be kept in a fridge. The UK has 100 million doses on order. Another 17 million doses of the newly approved Moderna vaccine are expected in the spring.

The UK has outstripped the EU: Four times as many people have been vaccinated here than in Germany, and 300 times more than in France.