BRITAIN is set to speed up its vaccination drive by opening Covid-19 vaccination for over-25s next week and reducing the time between two doses to vaccinate more people before June 21 ‘Freedom Day,’ amid a media report that officials are already working on “secret plan B to delay reopening until July” seeing the rise in the cases in the country.
Apart from opening younger age groups, the vaccine rollout in the UK will be further accelerated with the reduction of the time gap between two doses for over-40 people from 12 weeks to eight weeks.
Britons are said to be eagerly looking forward to the 'Freedom Day' though the recent rise in cases, thought to have been caused by the “more transmissible” Delta variant which is now the dominant variant in the UK, is now threatening the timetable.
File photo of a woman walking past an information sign amid the spread of coronavirus in Bolton, Britain. (REUTERS/Phil Noble)
Britain reported 6,238 new coronavirus infections on Friday (4), the highest number since late March and up from 5,274 on Thursday (3), the government data showed. There has been a small uptick in hospitalization though experts feel that the virus doesn't have nearly the same opportunity to take off as it did at the start of the winter wave since half of the adults in the UK are now fully vaccinated and almost three-quarters have received their first jab.
However, the officials are also reportedly drawing up “Plan B” to delay the end of the country's coronavirus restrictions by two weeks until July seeing the spike in daily infection, under which social distancing and limits on the number of people allowed inside venues may be retained, The Sun reported. Experts feel that a delay will allow more people to be jabbed and give more time to study the data.
The restriction on the number of people in a venue has raised concerns over England's hosting some of the delayed Euro 2020 football tournament, including the semi-finals and finals at Wembley. Business leaders have also reportedly warned that without the total removal of restrictions, pubs remain “unviable” and can lose millions in potential trade during the tournament and Britain's warmest weeks if the reopening gets delayed.
Meanwhile, a No 10 source said that suggestions to delay the road map is just a “speculation” and as prime minister Boris Johnson said this week, there is still “nothing in the data at the moment to suggest that we need to deviate from the roadmap.”
Pope Francis greets Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the G7 summit near Bari, Italy, in June last year, as Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and then British prime minister Rishi Sunak look on
