Johnson: 24/7 jabs ‘as soon as we can’

BORIS Johnson has pledged coronavirus jabs will be given 24/7 “as soon as we can” – as AstraZeneca said it expects to release two million doses a week of the Oxford vaccine by mid-February.

“We’ve released just over 1.1 million doses, to date, and we are scaling up as we’ve said very rapidly. And this will happen imminently, to releasing two million doses a week, we’re absolutely on track to do that,” said Tom Keith-Roach, president of AstraZeneca UK.

“We’re scaling up to two million a week imminently, and certainly we hope to be there on or before the middle of February,” he told MPs on the Science and Technology Committee.

The prime minister confirmed the government is considering a 24-hour vaccination programme to meet its promise to have the UK’s four most vulnerable groups vaccinated by the middle of February.

And his vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi told MPs ministers “will absolutely look” at the measure when asked about it, adding that he is confident the government will achieve its target for next month.