Prime Minister praises role of Bradford people as he visits Batley

He visited the Al-Hikmah centre in Batley, and praised it for the work it was doing in ensuring there is high take-up of the vaccine among the local Indian Muslim community.

He was shown how the vaccine vials are prepared, watched a vaccination take place and spoke with people who had had their vaccinations.

He said: “I’m seeing a very impressive take-up rate among the Muslim community here, the Indian Muslim community, and that is fantastic to see and I thank them for the work that they’re doing to dispel some of the nonsense about vaccines.

“I think it’s about spreading a sense of positivity about the vaccine, I think that’s what we want to see and I think that’s working.”

Speaking to the Telegraph & Argus, he praised Bradford’s role in trials for the Novavax vaccine, which has been found to be 89.3 per cent effective, and welcomed news of the Jacob’s Well mass vaccination centre opening today, describing it as "great news."

He said: “First of all I’m very glad there’s going to be a new vaccine centre. I want to thank the people of Bradford and the area for taking part in the Novavax trials because without them and without their volunteerism, their public spiritedness we wouldn’t be able to do this.

“The Novavax vaccines and others offer real hope for the country in the sense they may give protection against future variants in a way that can be incredibly useful for the country.

“By taking part in vaccine trials in Bradford and elsewhere, we can help to develop that science.”

He added: “I genuinely am optimistic about the way ahead, I do believe these vaccines have the potential to transform our relationship with this disease and that’s not just my view, it’s the view of all the scientists that I’ve talked to.

“I think the crucial thing is that we remember the lessons of Covid, its ability to evolve, the way new variants can suddenly start spreading faster or affecting people in different ways.

“You’ve got to be humble in the face of nature. I think science is very, very powerful, so is nature, and we’re going to succeed but I don’t want to give people absolute categorical assurance that we’re going to be able to do such and such a thing by such and such a date.”

However, he said he was confident that more would be known in the coming days and weeks.

Mr Johnson says he is “optimistic” people will be able to enjoy a summer holiday this year, provided the disease can be kept under control.

“I don’t want to give too much concrete by way of dates for our summer holidays. I am optimistic – I understand the reasons for being optimistic – but some things have got to go right,” he said during his Batley visit.

“The vaccine programme has got to continue to be successful. We have got to make sure we don’t get thrown off course by new variants, we have got to make sure that we continue to keep the disease under control and the level of infections come down.”

The Prime Minister said the rollout of the vaccination programme has been “phenomenal” but declined to be drawn on whether the Government would meet its targets.

“I think it would be unwise to speculate at the moment. I think the NHS, the pharmacies, the volunteers, helped by the Army, they have done an outstanding job,” he said.

“The rollout has been phenomenal so far but it is still, relatively speaking, early days.”

Mr Johnson has said that while the economy can bounce back strongly from the pandemic he is concerned about the impact on children’s education.

“It is going to take a while for our country to bounce back completely from Covid. The economy, I think, can bounce back very, very strongly – the UK has immense natural resilience,” he said during a visit to Batley.

“The thing that really concerns me at the moment is education and the deficit in our children’s education that we have run up as a result of these lockdowns.

“That for me is one of the major, major priorities for us – making sure that we ameliorate and repair the loss of time in the classroom, the loss of educational opportunities.”

Mr Johnson played down fears about vaccines being ineffective against variant coronavirus.

The Prime Minister told reporters: “We are confident that all the vaccines that we are using provide a high degree of immunity and protection against all variants.”

He said the vaccines could be adapted to deal with new variants if necessary.

“The fact is we are going to be living with Covid for a while to come in one way or another, I don’t think it will be as bad as the last 12 months – or anything like – of course, but it’s very, very important that our vaccines continue to develop and to adapt, and they will,” he said.

Mr Johnson said there were signs the lockdown measures were working but it was too early to “take your foot off the throat of the beast” by easing restrictions.

The Prime Minister said: “We are starting to see some signs of a flattening and maybe even a falling off of infection rates and hospitalisations.

“But don’t forget that they are still at a very high level by comparison with most points in the last 12 months, a really very high level.

“So the risk is if you take your foot off the throat of the beast, as it were, and you allow things to get out of control again then you could, alas, see the disease spreading again fast before we have got enough vaccines into people’s arms.

“That’s the risk.”

Mr Johnson said “virtually all” elderly care home residents had received their first coronavirus vaccine or been given an appointment for it.

He told reporters: “That’s very important for getting the spread of the virus down, getting the serious illness and fatalities down.”

Mr Johnson said he was “confident that we have the supplies” to ensure that people would receive their second jab within the Government’s 12-week timetable.

He told reporterts that a national approach to easing restrictions “might be better this time round” than the regional tiers.

The Government will set out its “road map” for the coming months on February 22, following a review of the lockdown, with March 8 targeted as the earliest possible date for reopening schools and easing other measures.

When the last lockdown ended, England returned to tiered arrangements which restricted the activities permitted in an area depending on the state of the virus.

He said: “It may be that a national approach, going down the tiers in a national way, might be better this time round, given that the disease is behaving much more nationally.

“If you look at the way the new variant has taken off across the country, it’s a pretty national phenomenon.

“The charts I see, we’re all sort of moving pretty much in the same sort of way, I mean there are a few discrepancies, a few differences, so it may be that we will go for a national approach but there may be an advantage still in some regional differentiation as well. I’m keeping an open mind on that.”

Ministers have previously said they expected a return to a regional tiers system.

On January 27, Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said “it’s sensible that we target restrictions on those places where the virus is most prevalent”.

Just five local areas in the UK have recorded a week-on-week rise in Covid-19 case rates, while all national and regional rates have now dropped to pre-New Year levels, new analysis shows.

Derbyshire Dales and East Lindsey in the East Midlands, along with Argyll & Bute, East Renfrewshire and Midlothian in Scotland, are the only local authority areas in the country to show an increase in case rates for the seven days to January 27.

In all five areas the week-on-week rise was small.