The UK may need to vaccinate people every six months for coronavirus vaccination, while Covid-19 testing is still needed in 2022, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Thursday during a select committee hearing.
“I expect that we will probably have to vaccinate because we do not know how long the protection against these vaccines is,” Hancock said in response to a question from an MP. “It might have to be every six months, it might have to be every year.”
Hancock added it “Yes” he did think that England’s current national exclusion would be the last country, but said: “There is absolutely no doubt that vaccinations and testing will be another feature next year.”
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England entered its third shutdown of the pandemic on Tuesday in response to rising Covid-19 infection rates in the UK over the past few weeks, which according to health chiefs was mainly due to a new, more easily transmitted variant of the virus.
Earlier, the CEO of the biotechnology company and the Covid vaccine manufacturer Moderna said that the firm believes that the vaccine can be protected against diseases due to ‘Potentially a few years’, although further redevelopment would be necessary if the virus mutated outside the current coverage.
On Thursday, the first people in the UK received the vaccine from the University of Oxford / AstraZeneca Covid-19, the second sting allowed in the country.
The UK on Thursday reported 52,618 new Covid-19 infections, as well as a further 1,162 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, according to official data bringing the total death toll to 78,508.
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