London:
Britain is confident that current vaccines will provide protection from a more transmissible variant dominant in India now spreading across the nation, Heath Secretary Matt Hancock stated on Sunday.
And hours later, he was in a position to announce that the nation had passed the milestone of 20 million adults vaccinated with two doses of the coronavirus jab.
The news came just just before England, Scotland and Wales are set to unlock components of their economy on Monday.
But additional methods to open up the nation once more have been place in doubt by the variant dominant in India.
Hancock told Sky News the government had a “high degree of confidence” that vaccines would stand up to the B1.617.2 variant, following new preliminary information from Oxford University.
“That means that we can stay on course with our strategy of using the vaccine to deal with the pandemic,” he stated.
Britain, one of the worst-hit nations in the world with more than 1,27,000 deaths, has also seen a fast deployment of vaccines.
According to government information the case numbers of the variant identified in India have risen from 520 to 1,313 this week.
In the face of the increasing circumstances centred about the northern towns of Bolton and Blackburn, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Friday that second doses of vaccines would be accelerated for more than-50s and the clinically vulnerable.
Spread like wildfire
Hancock stated the “vast majority” of men and women in hospital in Bolton with the new variant had been eligible for vaccination but had not come forward.
He warned mainly because of the higher transmission of the variant dominant in India it could “spread like wildfire amongst the unvaccinated groups” and mainly because of this the government “need to get as many people vaccinated as possible”.
The overall health secretary defended the government from criticism that it had been also slow to impose travel restrictions on India in the face of the new variant.
It was “completely wrong”, he stated, to recommend the UK could have acted more quickly to designate India as a “red list” nation which means arriving travellers would have to quarantine in hotels.
India was placed below the strict travel restrictions in April just before the variant was below investigation, he stated.
He also rebuffed any suggestion that any delay in acting had been influenced by a planned trip by PM Johnson in April to help in post-Brexit trade talks.
“We take these decisions based on the evidence,” he stated. PM Johnson’s stop by was ultimately scrapped mainly because of surging Covid circumstances in India.
Indoor hospitality and indoor entertainment such as cinemas, museums and sports venues are to open their doors in most components of the UK for the very first time in months on Monday.
Under the new measures, men and women and households will also be in a position to meet in private homes with some restrictions nevertheless in location, and restricted international travel will be permitted.
The government and authorities have sounded a note of caution more than plans to entirely lift restrictions on June 21.
Hancock stated if the variant dominant in India was 50 per cent more transmissible than the so-known as Kent or British strain that forced the UK into a January lockdown “then we will have a problem”.
“We’re in a race between the vaccination programme and the virus, and this new variant has given the virus some extra legs in that race, but we have a high degree of confidence that the vaccine will overcome,” Hancock stated.