Despite Omicron being a target of the Government’s ‘turbocharged Covid booster campaign, the program seems to be in limbo.
Officials promised that they would put the rollout of’steroids” on hold and increase the delivery rate for third Covid jab doses to 500,000 per day. They also said that the scheme would be open to those under 40.
The latest NHS data however shows that the UK is not even close to that goal, and in fact is delivering fewer boosters on certain days than it did a week ago.
Only 290,165 boosters, which is hardly an improvement on the 285,335 jabs that were given in the previous week, were distributed Sunday.
Jab roll-out was able to reach the Government’s target of half-million people per day on Saturday when the Government administered 464 616 Covid shots.
This was slightly lower than what had been delivered on Saturday, when 465111 jabs were administered.
The current pace of 2.75 million jabs per week means that it will be until March before every Briton eligible is offered their third Covid vaccine. That’s well over the target of the Government at end-January.
Many elderly and vulnerable UK citizens are not able to access a Covid booster despite the promises made. They have reported being unable to get appointments and that staff are too busy to give them jabs.
This week, the launch of the booster rollout was delayed due to insufficient acceleration.
According to The Telegraph officials have blamed the lack of acceleration on red-tape due to waiting for legal instructions on the roll-out to be provided by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).

Officials claimed that Covid booster jabs would be given on steroids to help fight Omicron, however the most recent vaccine numbers show that jabs are far below the Government’s goal of 500,000 per-day.

Boris Johnson announced UK’s Mammoth Covid booster Programme 10 days ago. The programme aims at providing all eligible adults in the UK one more jab by January 31st.
The prime minister also announced that the wait times between the second and third Covid jabs will be cut in half, from six to three months. This is to allow millions of eligible under-40s to get the vaccine and speed up the rollout.
After negotiating with doctor unions about what services GPs will cease to provide in support of the roll-out, it took until Friday for NHS chiefs to issue their guidance regarding the new jab rollout.
The document revealed, among other things, that under-40s will not be able book vaccines online before 13 December.
At the weekend just more than 20.5million Covid boosters were administered in the UK. This is less than half the 53million that the Government hopes the booster will be available by January.
The Telegraph received information from sources that suggested the NHS delayed opening of its booking systems while it waited for UKHSA to provide legal instruction.
Others disagreed and said such paperwork shouldn’t cause delay. They pointed out that updates to protocols are only for non-medical personnel, while pharmacists, doctors, and nurses can already follow the updated guidance.
Omicron is a disease that can be prevented by the use of booster programmes. However, scientists are still not sure how the Covid variant will spread and whether vaccines could become less effective due to its highly mutated nature.
The Department of Health has reported that the booster expansion was delayed. Yesterday’s numbers show 51,459 Covid new cases. That is five more than on Monday. It also marks the third week in which figures exceed the 50,000 mark.



There are approximately 46,000 Covid cases per day in Britain. Data from Covid Genomics UK Consortium suggests that the new strain may be behind about one-third of those 66, which is 1.4 percent.

Only 336 Omicron cases have been confirmed so far in the UK, however, Professor Paul Hunter of the University of East Anglia, who is an epidemiologist, believes there may be more than 1,000.

London and South East England are experiencing the highest number of Total Covid cases. Most Omicron infections in these areas can be attributed to returning travellers who have flown into the UK.
As experts warn that the Omicron super-mutant variant of Christmas freedoms is rapidly spreading in Britain, there have been fresh doubts.
Eminent epidemiologist Professor Tim Spector claimed infections of the highly evolved variant were doubling every two days and that there were up to 2,000 cases already — five times more than the official count.
King’s College London’s scientist who oversees the largest Omicron-symptom-tracking program in the country, has estimated that Britain will soon have more Omicron patients than any other African nation at the epicenter of this new epidemic.
Dr Jeffrey Barrett, head of Covid surveillance at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said Omicron was likely to become the UK dominant strain ‘within a matter of weeks’ rather than months like initially hoped.
Scientists predicted just yesterday that it would take until mid-January for Omicron to outpace Delta but Monday saw the biggest single day jump in cases of the mutant virus yet. Omicron has been confirmed to have infected a further 90 people within the last 24 hours.
Dr. Barrett stated that he believes we can now state that the variant of Delta is spreading more rapidly in the UK than it was at the time. This, I believe, was something that wasn’t clear until recently. It’s likely to overtake Delta (Delta), probably within a few weeks. I’m pretty certain of that.
Dominic Raab said today that ministers weren’t looking for tougher Christmas curbs. He also claimed they weren’t interested in introducing vaccine passports and working at home. This despite Omicron seeing a sharp increase. According to BBC Radio 4, ‘We don’t believe Plan B is necessary,’ he said on BBC Radio 4’s Today show. ‘Why? It is because of the effectiveness of the vaccine program.
Mr Raab was more definitive than Boris Johnson who yesterday refused to rule out tightening restrictions over the festive period, merely insisting that Christmas will be ‘better’ than last year.
Scientists anticipate booster jabs providing high protection against Omicron disease and death.
Omicron, even though it’s milder than Delta reports from South Africa, could cause a tsunami of hospital admissions.
This virus is capable of infecting former Covid patients quickly and experts from the UK Government expect that it will render existing vaccines less effective by making them 40 percent more difficult to stop infection.
Omicron may infect more people than expected, experts warn.
Asked whether Omicron could infect more people but make fewer people sick, Professor Spector told BBC Breakfast: ‘If early reports pan out – we don’t absolutely know this, we’ve got hardly any data in this country where we have high rates of vaccination – but if we assume that it is not more severe and possibly milder than Delta, but it’s much more transmissible…

Scientists are afraid of this image, which prompted UK ministers to boost the UK’s vaccine rollout. It also saw the return of English mask mandates. Experts fear that the Omicron variant will be the most deadly and vaccine-resistant super-mutant yet. It contains 32 spike protein mutations. A graphic released by the top national variant monitoring group shows that the Omicron strain has nearly five-fold more modifications on its spike protein than the Delta strain.
It means people who get the vaccine in large numbers will likely pass it on twice as fast than those who have it individually. This is good news for each individual, as we see fewer cases of the disease going to hospitals. Partly this can be attributed to our high vaccine rates.
“But, it also means you’ll eventually get more deaths or problems because almost everyone has been infected.
“And this is what it means for the whole country, but for each individual, it can be worse news, but for them all, it’s better. There is absolutely no excuse for complacency.
Since Omicron alerted the rest of the world on November 24, there has been an explosive rise in South African Covid infection rates.
The number of Covid cases increased 1800% in the week to 6,381 in just 24 hours. Although this was lower than yesterday’s 11,000 cases, tens to thousands fewer tests were performed.
Professor Spector of the Covid ZOEsymptom study stated that the UK may have Omicron in less than 10 days. This is contrary to the belief held by some other countries.