London Vaccine Summit aims to speed up Covid-19 vaccine uptake

IN an effort to boost the Covid-19 vaccine uptake in the city, a London Vaccine Summit will be held on Friday (25).

In order to speed up the vaccination drive in London ahead of the July 19 when Covid restrictions would be eased - senior officials, the NHS in London, London mayor Sadiq Khan, clinical experts, community, faith and business leaders will participate in the summit.

“Together, we will focus on making sure every possible avenue is taken to accelerate the rollout and ensure that all Londoners take up both doses of the vaccine as soon as possible,” mayor of the city, Khan was quoted as saying.

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi has praised this initiative and said it would help the team attending the summit to “see what has worked and how we can learn from it and scale it”.

He also said at a Downing Street press conference: “We know there is more, much more to do.

“As we look to tackle and take on those final steps, those hard yards on the road to recovery, we need to make sure as many people are protected as possible.

“So we are intensifying, doubling down our efforts to get more people to come forward and we are seeing real results in places like Bolton and of course in the North West and elsewhere.

“We’re honing in on areas where uptake is lower.”

UK records 19 Covid deaths

Meanwhile, the UK has added 16,135 Covid positive cases, highest reported daily infections since February 6. The government said a further 19 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Wednesday (24), bringing the UK total to 128,027.

Since June 17, 79,481 people had a confirmed positive test result, a week-on-week increase of 43.9 per cent, possibly linked to the Delta variant of the virus.

“We’re working hard to use our vaccination programme and other methods to get this more transmissible variant under control. And with the high levels of vaccination that we’re seeing, we’re confident we can do that, allowing us to move to step four,” a spokesman for the prime minister said.