Booster jabs ‘set for go-ahead next week’ – but vaccine creator says not everyone may need them
Booster vaccines are reportedly set to be given the go-ahead next week, despite a professor who helped develop the AstraZeneca jab warning that a mass campaign may not be necessary.
According to The Times, data suggests that an additional Pfizer dose, months after a second vaccine is given, significantly boosts the body’s immune response to coronavirus.
A positive benefit was seen among those who had previously been given Pfizer or AstraZeneca jabs too, indicating that vaccines could be mixed and matched.
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Booster jab programme expected this month
However, the newspaper said that millions of older Britons may only receive a third jab later this autumn to ensure they have maximum protection over the winter.
Data about the effectiveness of booster vaccines was reportedly delivered to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation yesterday.
Sky’s chief political correspondent Jon Craig said the government is determined to press ahead with booster jabs, but ministers are waiting to receive final recommendations.
He added: “The prime minister is desperate to avoid having to bring in lockdown measures in the autumn, hence he wants to go ahead with the booster jabs for as many people as possible, flu jabs, and possibly – if he can get it through the House of Commons – COVID passports as well.”
But speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert said immunity is “lasting well” for most people who have been double jabbed, and she suggested surplus doses should instead be redirected to countries where vaccination rates are low.
Dame Sarah, who led the development of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine, said the elderly and people with weakened immune systems should be in line for a third jab, but told the newspaper: “I don’t think we need to boost everybody.”
She added: “As the virus spreads between people, it mutates and adapts and evolves, like the Delta variant.
“With these outbreaks, we want to stop that as quickly as possible.”
Dame Sarah also called on the UK to “do better” in supporting countries where a small percentage of the population have received a jab – adding that “the first dose has the most impact”.
The latest government figures show 48,344,566 people in the UK have now received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and 43,708,906 have had their second.
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COVID-19 will ‘come back to haunt us’
Her remarks echo those of former prime minister Gordon Brown, who told Sky News on Sunday that COVID-19 will “come back to haunt us” if jabs aren’t distributed to developing economies.
Mr Brown warned that new variants like Delta could emerge and potentially hurt double-jabbed Britons unless vaccination rates in Africa improve.
He added: “We are doing the worst possible thing when it comes to making the world safer against COVID. If we leave these people unprotected, if it spreads uninhibited, it will come back to us.”
Politics
Norman Tebbit: Former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government dies aged 94
Norman Tebbit, the former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government, has died at the age of 94.
Lord Tebbit died “peacefully at home” late on Monday night, his son William confirmed.
One of Mrs Thatcher’s most loyal cabinet ministers, he was a leading political voice throughout the turbulent 1980s.
He held the posts of employment secretary, trade secretary, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Conservative party chairman before resigning as an MP in 1992 after his wife was left disabled by the Provisional IRA’s bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
He considered standing for the Conservative leadership after Mrs Thatcher’s resignation in 1990, but was committed to taking care of his wife.
Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit in 1987 after her election victory. Pic: PA
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called him an “icon” in British politics and was “one of the leading exponents of the philosophy we now know as Thatcherism”.
“But to many of us it was the stoicism and courage he showed in the face of terrorism, which inspired us as he rebuilt his political career after suffering terrible injuries in the Brighton bomb, and cared selflessly for his wife Margaret, who was gravely disabled in the bombing,” she wrote on X.
“He never buckled under pressure and he never compromised. Our nation has lost one of its very best today and I speak for all the Conservative family and beyond in recognising Lord Tebbit’s enormous intellect and profound sense of duty to his country.
“May he rest in peace.”
Lord Tebbit and his wife Margaret stand outside the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Pic: PA
Tory grandee David Davis told Sky News Lord Tebbit was a “great working class Tory, always ready to challenge establishment conventional wisdom for the bogus nonsense it often was”.
“He was one of Thatcher’s bravest and strongest lieutenants, and a great friend,” Sir David said.
“He had to deal with the agony that the IRA visited on him and his wife, and he did so with characteristic unflinching courage. He was a great man.”
Reform leader Nigel Farage said Lord Tebbit “gave me a lot of help in my early days as an MEP”.
He was “a great man. RIP,” he added.
Lord Tebbit as employment secretary in 1983 with Mrs Thatcher. Pic: PA
Born to working-class parents in north London, he was made a life peer in 1992, where he sat until he retired in 2022.
Lord Tebbit was trade secretary when he was injured in the Provisional IRA’s bombing in Brighton during the Conservative Party conference in 1984.
Five people died in the attack and Lord Tebbit’s wife, Margaret, was left paralysed from the neck down. She died in 2020 at the age of 86.
Before entering politics, his first job, aged 16, was at the Financial Times where he had his first experience of trade unions and vowed to “break the power of the closed shop”.
He then trained as a pilot with the RAF – at one point narrowly escaping from the burning cockpit of a Meteor 8 jet – before becoming the MP for Epping in 1970 then for Chingford in 1974.
Lord Tebbit during an EU debate in the House of Lords in 1997. Pic: PA
As a cabinet minister, he was responsible for legislation that weakened the powers of the trade unions and the closed shop, making him the political embodiment of the Thatcherite ideology that was in full swing.
His tough approach was put to the test when riots erupted in Brixton, south London, against the backdrop of high rates of unemployment and mistrust between the black community and the police.
He was frequently misquoted as having told the unemployed to “get on your bike”, and was often referred to as “Onyerbike” for some time afterwards.
What he actually said was he grew up in the ’30s with an unemployed father who did not riot, “he got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it”.
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