Yahoo Finance Matt Hancock hails progress on vaccines and says NHS staff may get jabs this year
The race to find a Covid-19 vaccine is “progressing well”, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said today, and he did not rule out some NHS workers getting one before Christmas.
Military chiefs are working with senior health officials on plans to roll out millions of jabs next year if trials being done at record speed prove one or more vaccines are safe and effective.
Mr Hancock told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The vaccine programme is progressing well. On my central expectation, I would expect the bulk of the roll-out to be in the first half of next year.”
Pressed on whether NHS staff could get it before the end of this year, he added: “I don’t rule that out but that is not my central expectation.”
Asked about reports that NHS bosses had been told to prepare for jabs within weeks, he said: “We want to be ready in case everything goes perfectly but it’s not my central expectation that we will be doing that this year, but the programme is progressing well.”
He gave the upbeat assessment as:
Early tests showed the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine produces a robust immune response in elderly people, triggering antibodies and T-cells. However, the finding does not mean the vaccine has yet been proved to be safe and effective in this age group.
Professor Adrian Hill, director of the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute seeking to develop the vaccine undergoing stage-three trials in the UK, US, Brazil and South Africa, said: “I’d be very surprised if [the pandemic] isn’t very clearly on the way down by late spring.”
America’s top infectious disease specialist Dr Anthony Fauci said it will be known by the end of November/start of December whether a safe and effective vaccine has been found. Vaccinating health workers could start by the end of the year, he told the BBC’S Andrew Marr show, but jabs for a “substantial proportion of the population” could take until the second or third quarter of 2021.
Health chiefs were told “to be prepared to start a Covid-19 staff vaccine programme in early December” in a memo from bosses at George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust in Warwickshire, according to the Mail on Sunday.
Britain has contracts for millions of doses of several vaccines out in trials. Doses of the Oxford University/ AstraZeneca vaccine have already been produced for the UK.
Mr Hancock said: “Of course, we are doing the logistical work, led by the NHS, working with the armed services … to ensure that we have that roll-out programme ready. But preparing for a roll-out and actually having the stuff to roll out are two different things.”
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