Vaccine: WHO’s Dr Nabarro calls for global rollout to be ‘fair’
Vaccines have been widely cited as the UK’s exit route from lockdown, and millions of people have now received their first vaccine dose in the UK. The Government has secured 400 million doses of coronavirus vaccinations from several manufacturers, and a national effort is underway to get as many people as vaccinated as possible over the coming months.
When will people over 65 get the Covid vaccine?
Currently the UK is aiming to vaccinate all of the top four priority groups by mid-February with at least one Covid vaccine dose.
This includes care home residents and carers, people over 80, frontline health workers, the over 75’s, the over 70’s and the clinically extremely vulnerable.
Once these top priority groups have been vaccinated, the Government is aiming to have offered a vaccine to people over the age of 50 and those aged 16 to 64 in an at-risk group a vaccine by early May.
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A spokesman for Health Secretary Matt Hancock: “As the Health Secretary has said – that is an ambitious goal and lots of things have to go well to reach it.”
Clive Dix, chairman of the UK Vaccines Taskforce, said on Saturday he was “very optimistic” of meeting the May ambition.
If the Government sticks to its targets, people aged 65 and over might expect to start being invited to vaccine appointments soon after the mid-February target has been met.
The UK has already vaccinated over 11 million people with their first dose of the vaccine.
Some 32 million people across the UK are estimated to fall into the first nine groups outlined by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
The priority list is as follows:
- Residents in a care home for older adults and staff working in care homes for older adults
- All those 80 years of age and over and frontline health and social care workers
- All those 75 years of age and over
- All those 70 years of age and over and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals (not including pregnant women and those under 16 years of age)
- All those 65 years of age and over
- Adults aged 16 to 65 years in an at-risk group
- All those 60 years of age and over
- All those 55 years of age and over
- All those 50 years of age and over
- Rest of the population (to be determined)
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Will we need further vaccinations?
The development of new Covid variants has been worrying scientists in recent months.
A strain dubbed the ‘Kent’ variant was first found in the UK, but new variants are also thought to have originated in South Africa and Brazil.
The UK’s Vaccine Minister, Nadhim Zahawi, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show this week “booster” vaccines could well be possible in the future to protect people against new Covid variants.
Mr Zahawi said: “We see very much probably an annual or a booster in the autumn and then an annual (vaccination), in the way we do with flu vaccinations where you look at what variant of virus is spreading around the world.”
In order to develop vaccines against any potential new strains of coronavirus, the UK has now agreed a deal with German company CureVac.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng tweeted: “We’ve entered into a partnership with CureVacRNA to rapidly develop vaccines against new strains.
“We must be prepared for all eventualities so we’ve placed an order for 50m doses if required.
“I can also confirm the agreement will allow large-scale manufacturing in the UK.”
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