Vaccine minister 'hopeful' most vulnerable will have Covid-19 jabs by 'spring'
Nadhim Zahawi said the Government aims to vaccine 2 million people a week, 14 million by mid-February and everybody who is vulnerable by spring
Simon Meechan
The vaccine minister is 'very hopeful' that the nine categories of most vulnerable people will get their Covid-19 jabs by spring.
Nadhim Zahawi told BBC Breakfast there will be a "big increase" in the number of vaccines delivered from next week.
He said: "It is an ambitious plan. The Prime Minister is right to set an ambitious target. The NHS has a very clear plan and I am confident that we can meet it.
"You will see from Monday a significant increase from the 1.3 million that we have done from December 8."
Vaccinating the nine categories of people listed by the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation (JVCI) - which includes care home residents, the elderly and people with serious illnesses - will reduce 99% of Covid-19 related deaths, Mr Zahawi told Times Radio.
Mr Zahawi said "the average age of a person dying from Covid is about 83 in hospital", but "there are still people between the ages of 50 and 65 who are needing hospitalisation for two or three days for additional oxygen support before they can overcome this terrible virus".
He added: "99% of mortality is reduced by protecting those nine categories, the most vulnerable."
When asked how long it would take to give jabs to those groups, Mr Zahawi said: "I'm very hopeful that by the spring we will get through the nine categories."
So far, 1.2 vaccinations have been done, Mr Zahawi told Sky News. The vaccine minister said he is confident that 14 million will be vaccinated by next month, although he admitted it is a tough target.
Mr Zahawi said: "I'm confident that as we begin to deploy and get more sites operational – I talked about the hospitals, the GPs, the community pharmacies and the national vaccination centres – so we will be at over 1,000 sites vaccinating.
"I'm confident you will see, certainly from January 4 to January 11, a real step up.
"So we've done over 1.3 million [vaccinations] since December 8, you're going to see a massive acceleration of that."
When asked if more than two million people needed to be vaccinated a week to reach the mid-February target of vaccinating almost 14 million people, Mr Zahawi added: "You're going to see that increase – the NHS has got a very clear plan.
"We've got a fantastic team working, seven days a week, all hours to deliver this.
"No doubt, it is a stretching target. But I think it's one that we should absolutely look to deliver."
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Asked about the prospect that some measures could be needed next winter to control the virus, Mr Zahawi told Sky News: "I think, as [chief medical officer] Chris Whitty also said, this will be a political decision when we get to that point of inflection between where community transmission is really impacted by the vaccination programme and, of course, by continuing to ramp up the testing infrastructure in the United Kingdom.
"Then the decision for Government, for us, is to say 'well you know when is it right to begin to lift some of the non-pharmaceutical interventions that we're having to make' – like the current lockdown that we are in – there will come a moment when we see where we can basically manage this virus and be able to bring it back under control. And that is a decision for the Government."