Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said that, as of Sunday morning, three quarters of all people over 80 in the UK have been vaccinated.
“(This) is absolutely brilliant progress,” he said, speaking to Sky’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday.
“Similar number of care homes, around three quarters and in fact we’ve vaccinated more people in just the last three days than France has in the entire history of this disease.”
Mr Hancock also defended the Government’s decision to delay the second doses of those receiving the Pfizer vaccine.
Mr Hancock said the responsible course of action was to get “as many people protected… as quickly as possible” he said.
Mr Hancock said that case numbers were “incredibly high” and the NHS remained under intense pressure.
“There is early evidence that the lockdown is starting to bring cases down but we are a long, long, long way from being low enough because the case rate was incredibly high,” he told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme.
“You can see the pressure on the NHS – you can see it every day.”
It came in response to concerns over delaying the Pfizer vaccine by up to 12 weeks.
Dr Rosie Shire, a member of the Doctors’ Association UK, said studies of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine show two doses three weeks apart gave 90% immunity.
“What really concerns us is we don’t know what happens if you don’t give that second dose of vaccination after three weeks.”
“The fact is that people are being vaccinated now and being put into what is effectively an unregulated unlicensed trial, whereby they’re receiving this vaccination on the understanding that they don’t know what’s going on.”
Dr Rosie Shire
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