Jeremy Hunt today urged ministers to ‘get on’ with a mass booster Covid vaccine programme
Jeremy Hunt today urged ministers to ‘get on’ with a mass booster Covid vaccine programme and not wait on their advisors to sign off on the plans.
The former health secretary said the situation in Covid-ravaged Israel should serve as a warning sign that even highly-immunised countries are vulnerable to another wave.
Britain’s Covid vaccine advisory panel has hinted that it will give the go-ahead to boosters for ‘millions’ but is yet to formally give it the go-ahead.
It may be weeks before the final details of the booster programme are set out by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
Boris Johnson last night appeared to jump the gun and get hopes up as he told elderly Britons and patients with underlying conditions to prepare for their third doses this autumn.
At the moment only 500,000 people with very weak immune systems are being invited to come forward for boosters.
But Mr Hunt urged the Government to press ahead with a wider programme and not a moment longer, adding: ‘In a pandemic I think even a few days can make a big difference.’
He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: ‘If you look at what’s happened in Israel, they have a higher vaccination rate even than us – 80 per cent of adults – and they have found a Delta variant does lead to increased hospital admissions, but two weeks after they introduced boosters those admissions started to go down again.
‘I understand why scientists are taking their time but I think in a pandemic politicians can also read the rooms and see the direction of travel.
Israel is recording the highest infection rate in the world and deaths and hospitalisations have risen sharply in the past month – despite 80 per cent of adults being vaccinated with two doses.
The country has been offering booster jabs to people over the age of 60 since July, and the scheme has helped to curb rising hospital admissions.
While Israel is seeing record case numbers, the jab is still offering protection against severe illness with Covid deaths running at about half of the level of the second wave, even though fatalities have been rising sharply since last month. There is now growing pressure for Britain to roll out a booster vaccine programme like Israel is doing
Britain’s independent vaccine advisory panel, said it was waiting on more evidence that these people would benefit from another dose and claimed that the ‘vast majority’ of Britons still had high protection — despite the UK’s cases trending in the same direction as Israel’s
Israel has been offering booster jabs to people over the age of 60 since July and has managed to curb rising hospital admissions in the age group as a result. Professor Eran Segal, a mathematician at the country’s Weizmann Institute, tweeted today that hospitalisations had started to fall just two weeks after the top-up campaign started. This graph shows how Covid hospitalisations have started to level off in Israel just two weeks after its booster programme began. When the drive was started hospitalisations were doubling every week. Predictions suggested this would continue (green line). But just two weeks after the jabs were given out actual hospitalisations have slowed (blue line)
‘So I think we should just get on, not wait for that advice, get on with a booster programme.’
The NHS had originally been instructed to start giving boosters to up to 32million people from Monday, but ministers are still waiting for the JCVI to sign off the programme.
Mr Johnson said last night: ‘The priorities now are the older generation going into autumn and winter, and we have always said there would be a booster programme in September – in this month – and we are going ahead with that.
‘What I would also say is 16 to 17-year-olds are eligible, they have been approved, they are a very important group for potential transmission … It is very encouraging to see more and more 16 to 17-year-olds taking the jab, but we need to go faster with those.’
He added: ‘I would just urge everybody who hasn’t yet had a jab to go and get one.’
Members of the JCVI said ‘many millions’ are likely to get third jabs, including the elderly, clinically vulnerable and healthcare workers.
But they are yet to decide which age groups should be included and whether patients should ‘mix and match’ vaccines, for example receive a Pfizer jab after two first doses of AstraZeneca.
The JCVI is facing mounting political pressure to speed up its decision-making. MPs and scientists have warned there is no time to lose in boosting the immunity of the vulnerable and elderly with the threat of a resurgence of coronavirus in the winter.
They are pointing to the situation in Israel, where the case rate is currently the highest in the world, but where over-12s are being offered third doses – helping to curb hospital admissions.
However, the JCVI say they need to see initial findings from the Cov-Boost study, due next week.
The trial by University Hospital Southampton has looked at nearly 3,000 Britons to test their immune response to third doses.
Yesterday Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the JCVI, said a decision might take weeks. ‘I think it’s highly likely that there will be a booster programme,’ he said. ‘It’s just the question of how we frame it.’
On Wednesday it was announced that third doses will be offered to half a million people with severely weakened immune systems, who were not sufficiently protected by two doses.
The decision was made separately to deliberations over boosters, which ‘top up’ someone’s immune response.
Yesterday Professor Peter Openshaw, a member of the New And Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, said the JCVI should not wait too long to make a decision.
He said: ‘If we wait for everything [studies] to report before making a judgment, we may well be past the time when we should have been making a decision.’
Israel has become the Covid capital of the world despite leading the charge on vaccines.
Stats compiled by Oxford University-backed research team Our World in Data shows there were a record 1,892 Covid cases per million people in Israel on Wednesday — nearly 0.2 per cent of the entire population in a single day.
That was significantly higher than second worst-hit Mongolia, where the rate was 1,119 per million, and double the figures for Kosovo (980), Georgia (976) and Montenegro (909), which rounded out the top five.
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