Jacob Rees-Mogg today gave the first sign of Cabinet dissent over Boris Johnson’s decision to delay the final stage of the lockdown exit roadmap — as ministers doubled-down on No10’s revised Freedom Day pledge, despite cases and hospitalisations continuing to rise.
The Commons Leader claimed ‘you can’t run society purely to stop the hospitals being full’, insisting No10 ‘doesn’t have the right to take charge of people’s lives, purely to prevent them seeing the doctor’.
His comments are likely to raise eyebrows in Downing St, with the Prime Minister already facing rebellion from his own anti-lockdown MPs who have criticised him for pushing back the final unlocking by four weeks. Remaining lockdown restrictions are now due to be lifted on July 19 — or ‘terminus day’ as Mr Johnson called it.
Michael Gove today said he was ‘as confident as confident can be about that date’, despite fears from backbench Tories that the goalposts will be moved once again as the outbreak continues to grow.
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The Cabinet Office minister added it was important for the public to ‘accept’ there would continue to be Covid deaths when the country unlocks, saying the nation needs to ‘learn to live’ with the virus.
Boris Johnson and England’s chief expert advisers Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance have all repeated the line that we will ‘have to learn to live with Covid’ in the past 24 hours, in what seems to be a concerted effort to take emphasis away from the daily death numbers.
Department of Health bosses today posted another 7,673 positive tests — up by a quarter on last Tuesday’s figure. Meanwhile, figures also showed the number of patients being admitted to hospital has soared by 46 per cent over the first week of June.
Despite the uptick in admissions, deaths remain flat. Ten more victims were added to the official death toll today, compared to 13 last week. Separate figures today revealed that England and Wales saw fewer Covid deaths in the first week of June than at any time since March 2020.
But the rate is climbing in the North West, where millions of adults are being urged not to travel and meet friends indoors to keep a lid on the Indian variant. Fatalities doubled from eight in the space of a fortnight to 16 across the region.
No10’s top scientists expect the death count to rise in coming weeks because of the spike in cases but remain confident that vaccines will thwart the disease, preventing tens of thousands of people who get infected from being hospitalised or dying.
More than 30million adults have now been vaccinated but MailOnline analysis shows the roll-out needs to speed up by around 12 per cent for the PM to meet his revised target of ensuring all adults have had their first vaccine dose and two-thirds of adults are fully vaccinated by July 19.
Office for National Statistics data shows that 52 Covid deaths occurred in England and Wales between May 29 and June 4, down from 69 a week earlier and the lowest recorded since the week to March 20 last year
Weekly deaths from the coronavirus in the UK are continuing to drop, but a worrying trend caused by the Indian variant is pushing up the number of Covid victims in the North West
Extra support to tackle a rise in cases of the Delta variant, which was first recorded in India, has been announced for more areas of the North West and Birmingham. The additional support will be introduced in Birmingham, Blackpool, Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Liverpool City Region and Warrington, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said on Monday. The package, which is the same as was announced for Greater Manchester and Lancashire last week, will see more support for surge testing, tracing, isolation support and maximising vaccine uptake after a number of cases of the Delta variant were detected in the areas
One chart presented by Professor Chris Whitty yesterday showed that hospitalisations have increased 61 per cent in a week in the North West, a trend which was predicted to follow across the rest of the country. It played a heavy hand in the decision to delay Freedom Day
Chief medical officer Chris Whitty warned at last night’s Downing Street press conference that hospitalisations had risen 61 per cent in the North West in just a week, as Boris Johnson announced that June 21’s Freedom Day would be postponed until July.
Professor Whitty warned this trend was expected to be seen across the rest of the country if June 21 had gone ahead as planned.
Extra support to carry out surge testing, tracing, isolation support and maximising vaccine uptake has already been deployed across the North West to tackle the more contagious variant. Data shows it helped to thwart the spread of the virus in Bolton.
Millions more people in the Midlands and North West of England are now being urged not to travel or meet people indoors in an attempt to curb the spread of the Indian Covid variant.
In guidance released last night, roughly 3.6million residents in Birmingham, Liverpool, Warrington and parts of Cheshire were asked to minimise their movements in and out of the affected areas, which are recording higher than average levels of the mutant strain.
But Boris Johnson made no mention of the fresh advice in his dramatic Downing Street press conference last night, where he confirmed England’s final unlocking would be pushed back by four weeks amid fears the mutant strain could overwhelm hospitals.
Remaining lockdown restrictions are now due to be lifted on July 19, which the Prime Minister last night promised would be the ‘terminus date’.
The ONS figures released today show that over 30 per cent of all Covid deaths in England and Wales – 16 of 52 – were recorded in the North West.
The number of people who had Covid mentioned on their death certificated between May 29 and June 4 was 98, which accounted for just 1.3 per cent of all deaths in England and Wales.
Of those deaths, 96 were in England and two were in Wales.
The numbers are up slightly from 95 recorded in the week before, but this slight increase was likely caused by registration lags due to the spring bank holiday, when many registry offices closed.
The data shows that 7,778 deaths were recorded in England and Wales that week – 4.8 per cent below the five year average, with the ONS noting this number was also impacted by the holiday.
Of the 98 people who had Covid mentioned on their death certificate between May 29 and June 4, only 57 had this recorded as their underlying cause of death.
The statistics show that for a second week in a row, most victims who died from were under 75, with 71.4 per cent of those being aged between 65 and 75.
The majority of Covid deaths took place in hospitals, followed by care homes.
Professor Kevin McConway, professor of applied statistics at the Open University, said the bank holiday makes short-term trends ‘pretty well impossible to evaluate for the latest week’.
He said this is ‘particularly unhelpful’, because accurate statistics for that week could have been ‘particularly informative’, as it is three weeks after restrictions were lifted for step three of England’s roadmap.
‘Mid-May is also when the Delta variant was becoming dominant, so any effect on deaths from that could have shown up,’ he said.
‘Late registrations because of the bank holiday mean it’s not at all surprising that the total numbers of registered deaths from all causes is lower than the previous week, but we can’t tell yet if that’s a real decrease.’
He said it is ‘very likely’ that when complete data is published – stating when the deaths happened, rather than when they were registered – it will be higher than 98.
Professor McConway warned that despite the number of Covid victims being ‘very small’ compared to most of the pandemic, ‘a rise is not good news after consistent decreases every week since mid-January’.
Though he said there is not yet a ‘major cause for concern’.
‘All these deaths are important and sad events for the families and friends of the person who died, but the numbers are still small,’ he said.
‘What’s important is that a close eye is kept on how the numbers change as the Delta variant becomes more and more established,’ Professor McConway added.
England needs to speed up its Covid vaccine rollout by 12% to reach 15MILLION jabs needed to hit Boris Johnson’s targets for July 19, analysis shows as UK reaches 30million fully inoculated milestone
England needs to speed up its Covid vaccine roll-out by 12 per cent to meet Boris Johnson‘s ambitious target for July 19, MailOnline can reveal after the UK reached the 30million milestone for second doses.
Analysis of NHS England data shows 15.3million extra jabs need to be administered to ensure all adults have had their first dose and two-thirds have are fully inoculated by ‘terminus day’. The Government’s previous goal was to ensure all first doses were dished out by the end of July.
Although No10 hasn’t made achieving the goal a clause of going ahead with the final unlocking, it was only ever delayed from June 21 by four weeks to ensure millions more adults were fully protected and to save the NHS from being overwhelmed once again.
Statistics suggest the health service would have to speed up its current roll-out by nearly an extra 50,000 doses per day in order to meet the targets. Currently England is administering around 390,000 jabs per day but it needs to hit just under 440,000. In the UK as a whole, around 462,000 jabs are being dished out a day on average — 45 per cent less than the 844,285 dished out on the March 20 peak.
London will require the most combined first and second doses to meet the targets, with nearly 4million jabs still needed. Mayor Sadiq Khan today pleaded the Government for more Pfizer and Moderna doses to meet demand for its younger population.
The UK yesterday dished out a further 132,117 first doses and 230,959 second doses, taking the country’s total fully inoculated population to 30.2million — 57.3 per cent of the population.
It comes as NHS chief executive Sir Simon Stevens today announced the health service expects all over-18s to be offered a vaccine by the end of the week. The roll-out was extended to over-23s today.
But the rate at which younger adults can be given a jab will depend on how many doses are made available by manufacturers, with Sir Simon admitting that ‘supply continues to be constrained’.
Vaccinating under-30s is entirely dependent on the supply of the Pfizer and Moderna jabs. AstraZeneca’s vaccine is not recommended for under-40s because of its rare links to blood clots.
Boris Johnson yesterday delayed June 21 ‘Freedom Day’ by four weeks to give the NHS time to vaccinate more adults and prevent the current spike in cases caused by the Indian ‘Delta’ variant resulting in hospitals becoming overwhelmed.
England needs to speed up its Covid vaccine roll-out by 10 per cent to reach the 18.4million needed to meet Boris Johnson’s lockdown easing targets for July 19, MailOnline analysis of NHS England data reveals. Graph shows: How many first and second doses are required in each region in England in order to give all over-18s a first jab and two thirds of adults second jabs
The Office for National Statistics population estimates include over-16s, so the MailOnline figures suggested will be slightly higher than in reality. No population data is provided by the NHS.
In order to reach the 15.3million doses by July 19, a rate of 438,009 first and second jabs will have to be dished out every day.
England’s current rate as of June 10 is 390,329 meaning the health service would have to provide a further 47,680 a day. At the current rate, it would not meet the Government’s target until July 25.
London has the most vaccines still needed to meet the target, with a further 2.3million first doses and 1.6million second doses required.
The Midlands needs the second highest amount, with 2million first doses and 670,000 second doses yet to be given out — 2.7million in total.
The South West is closest to meeting the Government’s target, with just 1.1million doses still required, followed by the East of England (1.5million).
But reaching the targets by June 19 will not only require speeding up the roll-out from its current rate but also that supply remains at least at the same levels currently experienced.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan today called on the Government to speed up the roll-out and has requested 367,000 extra Pfizer and Moderna doses for the capital.
Mr Khan told the Evening Standard: ‘Ministers must accelerate the roll-out of the vaccines so that restrictions can be lifted as soon as possible.
‘London has a young population, so it’s essential the Government allocates the capital more Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to allow us to rapidly provide first doses to younger age groups, while bringing forward second doses. This final push will help us to return to doing more of the things we love and to open up our economy.’
All over-18s are expected to be invited for their first Covid vaccine dose by the end of this week, NHS England’s boss claimed today.
Sir Simon Stevens told the NHS Confederation’s annual conference that the health service would ‘finish the job’ of the vaccination programme to the ‘greatest extent possible’ over the next four weeks.
He said he expects all remaining adults to be offered their first vaccine by the end of the week but admitted ‘supply continues to be constrained’.
The vaccine roll-out was extended to all 23- to 24-year-olds today, with people in the age group now able to book their appointment.
Sir Simon said: ‘It is now very important that we use the next four weeks to finish the job to the greatest extent possible for the Covid vaccination programme, which has been a historic signature achievement in terms of the effectiveness of delivering by the NHS — over 60 million doses now administered.
‘By July 19 we aim to have offered perhaps two thirds of adults across the country double jabs.
‘And we’re making great strides also in extending the offer to all adults — today people aged 23 and 24 are able to vaccinate through the National Booking Service.
‘I expect that by the end of this week, we’ll be able to open up the National Booking Service to all adults age 18 and above.
‘Of course, vaccine supply continues to be constrained, so we’re pacing ourselves at precisely the rate of which we’re getting that extra vaccine supply between now and July 19.’
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