More than one million people in the UK have received a Covid-19 vaccine, health secretary Matt Hancock has revealed. He said the "end is in sight" as the country reached the milestone in its race to vaccinate the population against coronavirus. Vaccinations began almost a month ago after the UK became the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNtech jab that was developed in the US.
Hancock tweeted: "Huge thank you to everyone playing their part in the national effort to beat coronavirus. Over a million people have been vaccinated already. With the vaccine roll-out accelerating, the end is in sight & we will get through this together."
It comes after the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was approved for use earlier this week, meaning the UK will soon have enough vaccine doses to immunise the entire population. The first 530,000 jabs are expected to be rolled out soon with the potential for 24 million people to get the jab before Easter. By the middle of January, two million doses of the Oxford vaccine are expected to be supplied weekly, a source said.
A member of the Oxford/AstraZeneca team said: "The plan is to build it up fairly rapidly - by the third week of January we should get two million a week." Second doses of either vaccine will now take place within 12 weeks rather than 21 days as initially planned. Deputy chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), Professor Anthony Harnden, defended the plans.
"I think the country is all in this together. And, I think we really, really want to pull together to try and do the best strategy possible." Meanwhile, England's Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty warned that Covid vaccine shortages “will last for months” despite the newly approved Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine improving supply issues. But both Pfizer and Oxford/AstraZenica have refuted reports of shortages.
Pfizer said in a statement: "We do not have any supply issues from our side at this point with regards to what has been agreed with the UK." Meanwhile, Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisations at PHE, said that mixing is not recommended and should only happen on "rare occasions. We do not recommend mixing the vaccines - if your first dose is the Pfizer vaccine you should not be given the AstraZeneca vaccine for your second dose and vice versa," she said.
"There may be extremely rare occasions where the same vaccine is not available, or where it is not known what vaccine the patient received. “Every effort should be made to give them the same vaccine, but where this is not possible it is better to give a second dose of another vaccine than not at all." Meanwhile, medical experts and public officials said the North of England is bracing for a devastating Covid-19 wave as the new variant continues to spread across the UK. The mutant coronavirus strain was first detected in the South East before Christmas and has been found to be 70% more transmissible.
It has since been driving up new infection rates, putting the NHS on the brink of being overwhelmed. Several London hospitals like UCH and the Royal London have issued desperate pleas for more staff as Covid wards fill up rapidly. A nurse, who works at the Whittington Hospital in north London, described the "unbearable" conditions as Covid-19 patient numbers continue to rise. The nurse described patients being left in corridors, some spending up to three hours in ambulances because of a lack of beds and one left without oxygen when their cylinder ran out.
