Boris warns 'now time for maximum vigilance' as tougher lockdown threatened

Boris Johnson warned that vaccinations are "a race against time" with the scale of the threat on the NHS, which he said includes a shortage of oxygen in some places. The Prime Minister hailed progress in the vaccination of elderly citizens as he confirmed approximately 2.4 million jabs have been administered over the past month. During a visit to a vaccine centre in Bristol, Mr Johnson said: "It's a race against time because we can all see the threat that our NHS faces the pressure, it's under the demand in intensive care units, the pressure on ventilated beds, even a shortage of oxygen in some places.

"We've got to focus on what we all need to do together to bear down on the disease."

Boris Johnson has said vaccinating the 15 million people in the top four priority groups by mid-February is a "massively stretching" but "achievable target".

The Prime Minister told reporters: "We cannot be complacent. The worst thing now would be for us to allow the success in rolling out a vaccine programme to breed any kind of complacency about the state of the pandemic."

Asked about the target, he said: "There's no doubt that it's a massively stretching target.

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"We believe it's achievable and we're going to put absolutely everything into it, we're going to throw absolutely everything at it to get it done. Those first four groups by the middle of February.

"Today, I think I can confirm that we've done roughly 40% of the 80-year-olds in this country already.

"We've done about 23% of the elderly residents of care homes."

During his visit, Mr Johnson also said "no-one is going to be more than 10 miles from a vaccination centre".

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The Prime Minister's comments come ahead of a press conference in which Health Secretary Matt Hancock is expected to outline plans to speed up the vaccination efforts.

Speaking on Sunday, Mr Hancock said the coronavirus vaccine will be offered to every adult in the UK by autumn.

During a visit to Epsom before his speech, Mr Hancock urged people to get the vaccine.

He said: "Obviously there are people here, on my team here at Epsom racecourse, who have gone to come out to give the vaccines and people have got to come get the vaccines."

Mr Hancock said "supply is the rate-limiting factor", but added that the UK has "one of the biggest supplies in the world including the home-made Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine".

Despite the Health Secretary's reassurances, some experts have warned the vaccination programme could likely extend until 2022.

Reading University's Dr Simon Clarke said: "I suspect that will be going on late into this year and of course, that will mean secondary jabs into next year.

"But of course we don't know how long, even if someone has the vaccine today, how long the immunity is going to last for that and they may end up having to have a booster in the spring of next year."