‘You've sacrificed so much, now get yourselves jabbed' ...Boris's rallying cry to the young

BORIS Johnson thanked young people for making sacrifices to protect the vulnerable – and urged them: now finish the job and get jabbed.

- Sam Lister

Booking for over 18s in England opened yesterday in the final push to fully reopening the nation, with keen teens getting theirs by the afternoon.

Tens of thousands more are expected to swamp huge drop-in centres today, including at London’s Olympic Park and the University of Manchester.

And the Prime Minister said England was on track to lift the remaining curbs on July 19.

He said yesterday: “I’m very confident that we’ll be able to go through with Step Four of the roadmap on the timetable that I’ve set out with treating July 19 as a terminus date. That’s certainly what the data continues to indicate.”

Younger and largely unvaccinated people are mainly behind the 79 per cent surge in cases of Covid’s Delta variant, first identified in India.

Mr Johnson said he did not underestimate the impact of the pandemic on young people and told them they had saved lives by abiding by the rules.

But he said he must ask “one more thing” of them...to take up the jab when they are offered it.

In a video posted online, he said: “This past year-and-a-half I have been absolutely in awe of the utter selflessness that our young people have shown in the fight against coronavirus. Jobs have been lost, education disrupted, plans put on hold.