Health Secretary Matt Hancock today blamed ‘lumpy supply’ for blips in Britain’s coronavirus vaccine rollout and revealed plans to administer jabs through the night had been scrapped.
Despite the UK’s inoculation drive being an undoubted success, with 10million doses already dished out, a trend has emerged in the figures showing a sharp drop-off in uptake on Sundays. For example last Sunday there were 46 per cent fewer jabs administered compared to the day before — dropping from almost 600,000 to 320,000.
The fall was even more pronounced two Sundays ago, on January 24, when the number of injections more than halved. About 490,000 people were vaccinated on that Saturday, but the figure plunged to 220,000 the following day.
Asked about the fluctuations during a round of interviews this morning, Mr Hancock suggested vaccine supplies arrive in one large batch at the start of the week and dry up by the time Sunday comes around. He told LBC Radio: ‘The answer is absolutely about supply… The supply is lumpy and as soon as a big shipment comes in we deliver it to the front line and they get it out as fast as we can.’
The Health Secretary also suggested No10 was purposefully masking data on its vaccine supplies, adding: ‘We don’t publish the supply figures and the reason we don’t is that they move around.’ But the Adam Smith think-tank told MailOnline there appeared to be a ‘lackadaisical approach’ to vaccinations on Sunday. Deputy director Matt Kilcoyne said: ‘Every hour counts, every day counts.’
He said the blip was ‘both worrying and unwarranted in the face of the pandemic’, adding: ‘The virus doesn’t take a break for the weekends and we need to treat this as a war effort.’
The comments echoed a warning from Scotland’s national clinical director, Professor Jason Leitch, yesterday who said GPs whose surgeries are closed on Sundays were slowing down the roll out North of the Border. Economists from the Institute for Economic Affairs have previously told…
Read the full article at www.dailymail.co.uk
Connect with us on our socials: