Boris Johnson vows to vaccinate all elderly care home residents this month

Play Video

1:56

Vaccinations within 10 miles of home by 15 February, says Boris Johnson – video

A national booking service for vaccine appointments in England will be launched to help hit ambitious targets, Boris Johnson has said, as he pledged to immunise every elderly care home resident by the end of the month.

The prime minister said everyone would be able to get a vaccination within 10 miles of their home and that GP-led vaccine sites providing jabs would increase to more than 1,000 by the end of next week, and hospital sites to 223, delivering hundreds of thousands of vaccines a day by 15 January.

“This is a national challenge on a scale, like nothing we’ve seen before. And it will require an unprecedented national effort,” Johnson told a No 10 press conference. “Of course, we are in a race against time. But I can assure you that we are doing everything we can to vaccinate as many people as possible across our whole UK.”

The announcement followed grim new figures for Covid in the UK, including 1,162 further Covid-related deaths. The only day with a higher death toll by this measure on the government’s dashboard was 21 April, when 1,224 deaths were reported.

In the latest figures announced by Johnson, 1.26 million people have been vaccinated in England, taking the UK total to nearly 1.5 million, which he said was more than all the other countries in Europe put together.