We're Back Where We Don't Want To Be ...Jabs Can Save Us

It's been a grim few days for Covid news.

Last week’s joint report from the House of Commons health and science select committees made for salutary reading, highlighting the mistakes made at the start of the pandemic. To cut a long story short: we were saved by the vaccine.

And in recent days the virus figures have been getting steadily worse. Yesterday 52,009 cases were reported across the UK, the worst in 14 weeks. Hospital admissions are up more than 10 per cent to 959. As Health Secretary Sajid Javid made clear on Wednesday, “life is not back to normal” – not least because cases could soon be up to 100,000 a day.

There is no single reason why Covid is not merely on the rise again, but sharply and worryingly so. Just as we were saved at the beginning of the year from calamity by the vaccine, so this time it seems clear that the biggest problem we are now facing is that too few people are getting their booster jab.

There also remains a large pocket who refuse even to have a first round of doses.

Only half of the 7.9 million who should have had a booster now have done so. And the programme to vaccinate children over 12 is proving very slow. Last week eight per cent of secondary school children were reported as having the virus.