Covid: Plan to vaccinate 2m people a week may not be achieved until end of January, ministers admit

Timetable throws fresh doubt on pledge to offer jabs to all the most vulnerable – just two weeks later

A target to vaccinate 2 million people a week may not be hit until the end of January, ministers have admitted – throwing doubt on the pledge to offer jabs to all the most vulnerable just two weeks later.

Boris Johnson has promised to inoculate the 12 million most at-risk people in England – and 14 million across the UK – by mid-February, to speed up the easing of the third Covid lockdown.

But a new official plan says: “by the end of January, our capacity to vaccinate several hundred thousand a day, and at least 2 million people per week, will be achieved”.

The government had been warned that it needed to be reaching 2 million a week almost immediately to achieve the ambitious mid-February timetable.

Earlier, the prime minister’s spokesperson defended not currently offering round-the-clock vaccinations on the grounds there is “not a clamour for jabs after 8pm”.

The 47-page plan promises 50 mass vaccination sites, with jabs also available at 206 hospitals and 1,200 local sites – with no-one living more than 10 miles from a vaccine centre.

All adults will be offered a vaccination by the autumn, a task “equivalent to establishing a national supermarket business in less than a month” falling to 80,000 NHS staff and 200,000 potential volunteers so far.

The document is the first to set out the progress in delivering vaccinations – 1.96 million people in England by 10 January, 375,000 receiving a second dose.

However, the Department for Health and Social Care has not provided a breakdown by region, or age – information that might be provided in the weeks to come.

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said: “It's taken a tremendous amount of hard work and dedication to make such an incredible start to this ambitious deployment programme.

“Our vaccine deployment plan sets out exactly how we will harness these efforts to expand the programme quickly and safely.

“Our UK Covid-19 vaccines delivery plan maps our route back to normality, but it does not mean we can be complacent and it is mission critical that everybody abides by the restrictions in the coming weeks.”

The plan says nothing about speeding up when teachers will be vaccinated, despite growing pressure to do so – with many schools still open for hundreds of vulnerable children.

The mid-February target would vaccinate care home residents and their carers (1 million), over-80s and frontline health and social care workers (5.2 million), over-75s (1.9 million) and over-70s and the clinically extremely vulnerable (4 million).

The rest of phase one will offer jabs by the spring to all over 50s and younger at-risk adults – but there is no mention of whether teachers will be given priority in phase 2.

Later, asked about the mid-February plan at the Downing Street press conference, Mr Hancock insisted: “We are on track to meet that target. It’s not going to be easy, but we are going to get there.”

Alongside him, Professor Stephen Powis, the NHS medical director, said he too was confident that the target would be met.

He also warned there are now 13,000 more Covid-19 patients in hospital than there were on Christmas Day.

“Less than a fortnight into 2021, the number of people in hospital with Covid has already gone up by a third, a rise of around 8,000.”

And, pointing to the bleak outlook, he added: “We are still to see the full impact of the Christmas loosening of restrictions.”