However, ministers still hope to avoid the need for fresh restrictions. Senior government sources confirmed there was still a firm view that Covid passports – controversial with Tory MPs – would also form part of any move to plan B, with one saying that businesses had had “plenty of time to prepare for that possibility”. NHS and doctors’ leaders and scientists have urged the government to trigger its “plan B” measures, which include reintroducing mandatory mask-wearing in public places and restoring working from home guidance. “Ministers cannot blame the public when 2 million haven’t even been invited for a booster jab and on current trends we won’t complete the booster programme until March 2022,” he said.

There were 75,445 administered on Wednesday. In the Commons, the shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said the NHS was coming under pressure because “the vaccination programme is now stalling” and called on the government to commit to 500,000 jabs a day. Labour has called on the government to speed up the programme. Some 2.68 million people aged 80 and over in England have received two doses of vaccine, of whom 1.34 million (50%) are now estimated to have had their booster dose. That is the way to communicate, and we should do that,” he said.Ī senior government health adviser said they believed the focus on an expedited booster campaign was a red herring, however, and that a change to five months would not make much of a difference as it was just a small part of a much bigger picture.

“It is dead easy to get the public engaged on this subject: the prime minister holds a press conference with the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser and starts to explain in harsh terms what will happen if people do not carry on being vaccinated. Mark Harper, the chair of the Tory Covid Recovery Group, said that in the earlier stages of the vaccine rollout “there was a massive focus on it in government, from the prime minister downwards … we need that level of focus on boosters”.īernard Jenkin, the chair of the influential Commons liaison committee, said Johnson should take a more prominent role.

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