Britons will be able to go on holiday next summer after vaccine rollout, says taskforce chief

Britons will be able to go on holiday next summer, the UK’s vaccine taskforce chief has said.

Kate Bingham, chair of the government’s vaccine taskforce, made her comments after the UK’s mass coronavirus immunisation programme began on Tuesday.

In what has been dubbed a “truly historic day”, 90-year-old Margaret Keenan, originally from Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, became the first person in the world to be given the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine outside a clinical trial when she was given her jab at University Hospital Coventry.

It was the first of 800,000 doses to be given over the coming days and weeks, but health secretary Matt Hancock promised “several million” will be delivered before the end of this month.

Later, Hancock told the House of Commons he had already booked his summer holiday.

He said: “I do have high confidence that the summer of 2021 will be a bright one without the sort of restrictions that made the summer of 2020 more restrictive.

“I’ve booked my holiday. I’m going to Cornwall.”

Watch: First person to receive COVID-19 vaccine says ‘go for it’

Bingham said the rollout of the vaccine could pave the way for Britons to go on holiday next summer.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “My gut feel is that we will all be going on summer holidays.

“It is likely that those people most at risk will be vaccinated through to April, and then the JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) and the Department of Health will then consider how to broaden out the vaccinations to other adults.

“I think by the summer we should be in a much better place to get on planes.”

Bingham, who is expected to step down from her role at the end of the year following claims she shared commercially sensitive information with investors and hired a team of PR consultants at a cost of £670,000, said: “I don’t think we’re going to get away from this virus ever, so we’re going to have to maintain sensible hygiene and washing hands, and so on.

“I would like this vaccine to be as routine as an annual flu jab and that we manage it rather than get bowed down by it.”

Hancock told the Today programme: “I have great hopes for summer 2021 and I hope we can lift the restrictions from the spring.

“We’ve said that we think that, from the spring, things can start getting back to normal, and, because we’ve been able to get this vaccination programme going sooner than anywhere else in the world, we’ll be able to bring that date forward a bit.”

Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director of NHS England, said 2020 had been a “dreadful” year but life would get back to “normal” in the coming months.

Read more

The Tier 3 COVID lockdown rules explained

The Tier 2 COVID lockdown rules explained

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, he said: “It’s been a really dreadful year 2020, hasn’t it? All those things that we are so used to, meeting friends and families, going to the cinema, all being disrupted.

“We can get those back, not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, but in the months to come as this vaccine programme rolls out, we will start to get back to normal.”

He said: “This is a truly historic day, a turning point in this pandemic, another world-first for the NHS, the start of the largest vaccination programme in our history.”

But the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, warned that face masks could still be needed late into next year.

He told Sky News: “It’s going to take quite a long time to make sure everybody in the at-risk groups and all of the groups that are difficult to reach get vaccinated as appropriate.

“It may be that next winter, even with vaccination, we need measures like masks in place – we don’t know yet how good all the vaccines are going to be at preventing the transmission of the virus.”

Watch: COVID dos and don’ts of Christmas