Almost a quarter of over-80s have had Covid jab, Boris Johnson says

The UK has already vaccinated almost a quarter of people over the age of 80, Boris Johnson has announced, pledging the government will use “every second of this lockdown” to immunise more vulnerable groups.

The prime minister pledged there would soon be daily updates on the vaccination figures but said there would be “long weeks ahead and we must persevere with these restrictions”.

The vaccination statistics came with bleak figures announced by Johnson and the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, who said there were now an estimated 1 million people infected with Covid-19 in England, or one in 50 people.

The estimate from the Office for National Statistics found 2% of the UK population had the virus between 27 December and 2 January.

“I think obviously – everybody, you all – want to be sure that we in government are now using every second of this lockdown to put that invisible shield around the elderly and the vulnerable in the form of vaccination and so to begin to bring this crisis to an end,” Johnson said.

Johnson said the significance of the vaccination programme’s advances should not be underestimated and said it proved it was right to prioritise the elderly, even over healthcare workers.

“And when you consider that the average age of Covid fatalities is in the 80s, you can see the importance of what we have already achieved. And that is why I believe that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation was right to draw up a programme aimed at saving the most lives the fastest.”

Johnson said the UK had now vaccinated over 1.1m people in England, and over 1.3m across the UK. He said the UK would have almost 1,000 vaccination sites across the country by the end of this week.

Defending his decision to keep most schools open until last night, Johnson said he had hoped to see evidence that tier 4 measures were working to bring the infection rate down.

“The tier 4 measures were something that we wanted to evaluate and over the course of the the days leading up to Sunday … we were hoping that we would start to see some impact and that we would be able to keep schools open, because keeping schools open is an absolute priority for this country.

“It was clear that we’ve got to a situation where tier 4 on its own couldn’t be relied upon to get the virus under control.”