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All adults will have been offered the coronavirus vaccine by the fall, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.
The cabinet minister made the announcement when he told Sky News that more than 200,000 people are getting hit by COVID-19 every day and that the government is on track to hit its goal of two million vaccinations a week.
But speaking at Sophy Ridge on Sunday, the health secretary said the current pressure on the NHS was “very bad” and repeated the need for people to follow lockdown rules and stay home, warning that “we cannot give up. ” Just because coronavirus injections are being launched.
This echoed the harsh message from England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty that the NHS faced the ‘most dangerous situation’ in living memory.
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‘We are in the darkest stage of the pandemic’
The health secretary told the BBC’s Andrew Marr that “we are absolutely going to offer the vaccine to everyone” in the fall.
“We have orders for more than 350 million doses,” he said, “they are not all here yet, and we are launching them as fast as they are delivered.”
Hancock also spoke about the enforcement of the lockdown rules, saying he “absolutely” backed the police in strict enforcement of the law when COVID-19 restrictions, after two women were fined for driving five miles for a walk in the country, warning that “every flex can be fatal.”
He told Ridge that the government was ready to meet its goal of vaccinating more than 13 million people over the age of 70 and the most vulnerable by mid-February, a goal that requires two million hits per week.
Hancock said: “Yes, we are on the right track. The factor limiting the rate at the moment is supply, but it is increasing.
“I am very happy to say that at this moment we have more than 200,000 people vaccinated every day.
“We have now vaccinated about a third of the people over 80 in this country, so we are making significant progress, but there is still further expansion ahead.
“This week we will open mass vaccination centers. Large sites, for example, at the Epsom racecourse, there are seven in operation this week and more next week, where we will pass a large number of people.”
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Professor Whitty’s Warning in New COVID-19 Announcement
By refusing to criticize the police over complaints that some forces had been overzealous in imposing fines, Hancock stressed the need for people to abide by the rules.
He told Ridge: “The pressure on the NHS is very bad and therefore we must reduce the rate of cases.
“From what we can tell, the vast majority of people follow the rules.
“Just because the vaccine is coming we can’t give up, because the pressure on the NHS is here right now.”
Hancock added: “I will absolutely stand behind the police because the challenge here is that every push-up can be fatal.
“You could look at the rules and think, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter too much if I do this or that.’
“But these rules are not there as limits that must be pushed, they are the limit of what people should do.
“The police are right to take the rules we have introduced very seriously. We have not introduced them because we wanted to, we have introduced them because we had to.”
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The comments come after the Secretary of the Interior. Priti Patel Besides gave the backing to the police arguing that there was “a need for strict enforcement where people are clearly breaking these rules” and committed officials “would not hesitate to take action.”
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer emphasized the importance of the “stay home” message.
He said: “We are in the darkest stage of this pandemic now, it is a race between the virus and the vaccine and everyone must follow the guidance of the government.”
Meanwhile, Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) said that the launch of the vaccine will have already prevented thousands of people from having to be admitted to hospital with the virus.
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The University of Bristol professor of pediatrics told Ridge: “It is too early for the vaccine to have started to have a measurable impact, but we can predict that it is already preventing cases simply by the number of people who have received the vaccine. It is now approaching a million and a half people, and the rate of infection that is occurring is really very high now.
“So there are certainly thousands of people who have no longer been admitted to the hospital and who will not die of this infection as a result of the program that began in December.”
