Hancock says Oxford vaccine success does not remove
need for tough restrictions now
Health secretary says tough measures ‘will continue
until the vaccine can make us safe’ as PM set to announce new tiered
restrictions
@AndrewSparrow
Mon 23 Nov
2020 10.28 GMTFirst published on Mon 23 Nov 2020 09.13 GMT
1m ago
10:28
Dr Michael
Tildesley, associate professor in infectious disease modelling at the
University of Warwick and a member of Sage (the government’s Scientific
Advisory Group for Emergencies), said it could be five months before enough
vaccine could be given to the population to achieve some sort of herd immunity.
Speaking on
Times Radio this morning, Tildesley said:
The vaccine
is on the horizon. But we’re still probably four/five months away from getting
to the stage that we can give enough doses out to the population to start
thinking about achieving herd immunity as a nation.
What we
really need to do in the meantime is get the message out there that, yes, there
is good news - the cavalry is appearing on the horizon - but we need to keep
incidence as low as possible. We need to keep observing our social distancing.
In an
interview on LBC Matt Hancock, the health secretary, was asked if carol
concerts would be allowed at Christmas. He replied with the Arabic word:
“Inshallah [God willing]”. When pressed, Hancock said he would leave it to
Boris Johnson to explain in the Commons.
24m ago
10:06
Hancock
says vaccination programme could mean life will 'start to get back to normal'
after Easter
Here is a
full summary of the points Matt Hancock, the health secretary, was making on
his morning interview round.
Hancock
said the success of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine did not remove the need for
tough restrictions now. (See 9am.)
He said the
number of cases in the UK was now “clearly starting to fall”.
He admitted
that the new tier 3 restrictions would be tougher than the old tier 3
restrictions. That was because the old restrictions managed to flatten case
numbers, but not bring them down.
He said the
combination of tough restrictions and mass testing in Liverpool had much more
successful than he expected. He said:
In
Liverpool, cases are down by more than two-thirds in the last few weeks. And
this is a combination, of course, of those restrictions that have been in
place, but also in Liverpool we put in mass testing.
They’ve
tested over 200,000 people of the just over half a million who live in
Liverpool. And they’ve found a load more people who were asymptomatic, didn’t
know that they had a problem, didn’t know they have the virus.And the
combination of the mass testing, and the measures in Liverpool, have brought
the cases down really quite remarkably, much faster than I would have thought
was possible.
He
dismissed Andy Burnham’s complaints about the new three-tier system of
restrictions (see 9.39am) - and compared Burnham’s record in Greater Manchester
unfavourably with what had happened in Liverpool. He said:
In
Manchester there was a disagreement, there was some unfortunate messaging
locally. In Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson, and Steve Rotheram [the mayor of
Liverpool city region] both did a great job ... There may be some noises off,
but I have a high degree of confidence that this new tier system will be able,
in the tier 3 areas, to get the cases down.
Hancock
claimed that care homes would not need extras staff to operate the rapid
testing system for relatives to allow visits to take place. In an interview on
the Today programme, asked if the government was going to give care homes the
money they needed to use rapid testing in this way, Hancock said at first the
government was putting the support in. When pressed, he said new protocols were
available. When it was put to him that care homes say they need extra staff for
this system to operate, Hancock said he did not accept that.
He said the
government was still working on giving care homes legal indemnity from being
sued for negligence over Covid infections. He said he “hoped” the government
would be able to reach “a positive conclusion” on this.
He said he
hoped a vaccination programme could start in December, with life starting “to
get back to normal” after Easter. He said:
[Vaccination]
is subject to that regulatory approval and I really stress that because the
medicines regulator, it’s called the MHRA, is independent, they’re rigorous,
they’re one of the best regulators in the world.
They will
be very, very careful to ensure that they look at all the data to make sure
that this is safe.
Subject to
that approval, we hope to be able to start vaccinating next month.
The bulk of
the vaccine rollout programme will be in January, February, March, and we hope
that sometime after Easter things will be able to start to get back to normal.
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