LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on Tuesday that the rapid decline in COVID-19 deaths was largely due to the closure of three months, not the vaccination program, and that cases would rise again as restrictions eased. .
The UK launched their vaccination process in December and has already offered a first shot to all over the age of 50, the clinically vulnerable and health workers. The country stands just behind Israel in the share of its population that has received at least one dose.
However, the rollout was followed a month later by a third exclusion in early January to address increasing infections by the “Kent” variant of the virus. Since February, daily infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths have declined sharply.
“Most of the work to reduce the disease has been done through the closure,” Johnson said Tuesday, adding that there was no reason to change the roadmap for reopening the economy.
“As we unlock, the result will inevitably be that we will see more infections and unfortunately we will see more hospitalizations and deaths.”
With the improvement of conditions, England on Monday reopened all retailers, hairdressers, gyms and bar gardens and Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales will have to reopen different elements of their societies in the coming weeks.
The rollout of vaccines also got a boost on Tuesday when Moderna became the third vaccine to be offered in England after AstraZeneca and one from Pfizer-BioNTech.
This will help keep Britain on track to reach its target of offering against adults by the end of July.
Modern, already offered in the United States and Europe, uses the same mRNA technology as the Pfizer recordings, but can be stored at normal refrigerator temperatures, unlike its US counterpart, which has to be kept at ultra-low temperatures.
NHS England said on Tuesday that people aged 45 and over could make appointments to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. For the categories that have already offered a vaccine, it is said that 95% of the eligible people have accepted the offer.
However, in another warning to optimism, the government announced an extension of the so-called revival tests in the Lambeth and Wandsworth districts in south London to detect cases of the variant first found in South Africa.
There have been 74 confirmed and probable cases of the coronavirus variant, known as B.1.351, in the districts, and there are concerns that vaccines are less effective against it.
“The most important thing is to look: if the South African variant has really started, and we will probably know in two to three weeks, then we may need to interrupt the reopening a bit,” said James Naismith, professor of structural biology at the University of Oxford and director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, told BBC Radio.
With more than 127,000 deaths, the UK has the fifth highest death rate in the world due to COVID-19.