Vaccines boost indarkestweek

Hospital alert over new cases

FORMAL APPROVAL of a third Covid vaccine by the UK medicines regulator offers another glimmer of light at the end of one of the darkest weeks yet in the pandemic as the daily death tolls regularly passes 1,000, and the country comes to terms with a new lockdown made more daunting by winter’s presence.

Yet, while the Government has agreed to purchase an additional 10 million doses of the new Moderna vaccine on top of its initial order of seven million, supplies will not be delivered to the UK until the Spring – a variable date at the best of times – because production of the lifesaving jab needs to be stepped up.

And it is this time lag – along with the logistics of distributing both the Pfizer and Oxford- AstraZeneca vaccines – which makes it more important than ever that families heed the Government’s ‘ stay at home’ edict and that the police start publishing details of lockdown breaches in order to encourage full compliance with the law.

For, while stricter measures throughout the autumn, and now winter months, helped to keep the virus in check, more than a quarter of new cases in the region are now the fastspreading Covid variant threatening to overwhelm some hospitals and leading to a ‘ major incident’ now being declared in London. And with parts of Yorkshire seeing “scary” rises of more than 60 per cent in a week according to public health chiefs, the best possible way to assist NHS personnel and carers in beating this disease is to obey the guidelines at all times.

It is to the immense credit of NHS, public health and local authority leaders that they’ve coped so well to this point – and often in spite of the Government. It is, therefore, fundamental that this undertaking, and the sacrifices made by so many families, are not compromised at this late hour by a selfish minority taking unnecessary risks when hope, in the form of a third vaccine, is now visible on the horizon.