All adults in the UK should have been offered the Covid vaccination by September, Dominic Raab has said, setting a clear timescale for the first time.
The vaccination programme is focusing on four priority groups at the moment, including the over-80s and care home residents, and ministers are increasingly confident that the mid-February deadline for completing that first phase will be met.
Speaking to BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show, the foreign secretary was asked about reports that all other adults could be vaccinated by the end of June.
“The plan is to get the first 15 million most vulnerable people vaccinated with the first dose by the middle of February,” he said. “We then want to get, by early spring, another 17 million. At that point we’ll have 99% of those most at risk of dying of coronavirus administered their first jab, and then the entire adult population we want being offered a first jab by September. That’s the roadmap.”
He added: “Obviously if it can be done more swiftly than that, then that’s a bonus.”
Raab said the government hoped to ease the lockdown restrictions in England in March. “When we get to a situation in the early spring, perhaps March, if we succeed in hitting those targets – … we can start to think about the phased transition out of the national lockdown.
“It won’t be a big bang, it will be done phased, possibly back through the tiered approach that we had before.”
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