By People aged over 70 could start receiving Covid booster jabs from September to protect them from new variants, the vaccines minister has said.
Nadhim Zahawi told the Daily Telegraph the first booster doses will go to the over-70s, health and social care staff and the clinically vulnerable.
Revealing details of the plan to the newspaper, Mr Zahawi said the “most likely date” for booster jabs to begin would be September.
He said deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam thought “that if we are going to see a requirement for a booster jab to protect the most vulnerable, [it] would be around September”.
Mr Zahawi also told the paper that drive-through jab centres could be set up across the UK in the next few months to tackle vaccine hesitancy among younger groups.
He said: “We did some fantastic pilots of drive-in jabs that went really well. And again, as we go down the cohorts in the current deployment you’re going to see more of that.
“It’s a great way as you do the under-50s, the under-40s, under-30s. Convenience becomes a much greater tool to deploy because you want to make sure for those people, where we think there may be greater hesitancy, we make it as convenient as we can make it.”
Sky News Image: Nadhim Zahawi
More than 29 million people in the UK have now had a first dose of a Covid vaccine in the UK.
Health workers with previous Covid-19 infections had six times the immune response to one dose of the Pfizer jab than those who hadn’t had the virus.
The researchers said this emphasised the importance of people having their second dose to provide the same “booster” effect.
Those who have had Covid should still have a second jab, though, to ensure “longer-lasting” protection.
