Anyone aged 18 and over will be able to book their COVID-19 vaccine in England from Friday.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock made the announcement during a speech in which he hailed the immunization program as “an incredible achievement.”
It comes as coronavirus cases are said to be “increasing exponentially” across England, with the latest estimates putting the number R at 1.44.
Number of COVID-19[female[feminine infections are doubling every 11 days, according to data from the REACT-1 study by scientists at Imperial College London, which said their results showed a “rapid shift” from the Alpha (Kent) variant to the Delta variant, first detected in India.
Research has found that the exponential increase in prevalence is due to infections in young people.
And the latest weekly monitoring report from Public Health England (PHE) shows coronavirus case rates in all parts of England continue to rise.
PHE said infections among all age groups were on the rise, with the highest rate among those aged 20 to 29, where there were 195.9 cases per 100,000 people in the seven days leading up to June 13.
This compares to 123.6 the week before.
The second highest rate is for those aged 10 to 19, dropping from 100.3 to 143.3, while for those aged 60 and over, the rate is only 14.3 compared to 10.6.
England’s Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty has warned that COVID-19 “has not thrown us its latest surprise and there will be several more in the next period”.
Speaking at the NHS Confed conference, he said he expected case rates to continue to rise over the next few weeks due to the fact that Delta was “significantly more transmissible” than Alpha.
He said: “In the medium term I expect we will get another winter push, a late fall / winter push.
“And that’s because we know that winter and fall promote respiratory viruses, so it would be very surprising if this particular highly transmissible respiratory…
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Source: news.sky.com
This notice was published: 2021-06-17 14:26:00
