Right from the start this country’s vaccination programme has been the envy of the world. The very first Covid-19 vaccine to be administered was in Coventry in early December last year. Britain’s success in acquiring large quantities of most of the vaccines being developed globally, for which the vaccine task force deserves great credit, guaranteed an early lead and was in sharp contrast to the European Union’s lumbering approach.
The UK is still ahead of most countries thanks to that flying start, but Spain now has a higher proportion of its population double-vaccinated and Ireland is threatening to move ahead with a higher share of its adult population fully dosed. Canada is also above the UK.
This is not to decry this country’s vaccine success, which is considerable. The challenge now is for this country to follow through and ensure that we do not squander our early advantage. This means two things. Firstly, addressing low vaccination rates among the young, which concerns health officials, and secondly, abandoning restrictions that make little sense.
Sixty per cent of the 18-30 age group in England have had a first dose and fewer than 21 per cent have been double-jabbed. Among those aged 30-40 the figures are 66 per cent and 39 per cent respectively. Some of this is because the young were offered vaccinations later but there is also evidence that take-up is slower than for older groups.
It would be a terrible indictment on our education system if the reluctance of some young people to get vaccinated was because they believed the attention-seeking nonsense and crazy conspiracy theories spouted at rallies by the likes of the struck-off former nurse Kate Shemirani, the fantasist David Icke and other members of his family, and Piers Corbyn, brother of the former Labour leader. A line-up like that should persuade nobody of anything other than that it makes sense to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
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More likely, some young people see the risks to them of Covid-19 as low and the benefits of being vaccinated limited. That is wrong, as England’s deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, pointed out in an online session last week. Unvaccinated young people are being admitted to intensive care with Covid.
The risk to the wider population from an unvaccinated cohort means that it is right to use a stick-and-carrot approach to pushing up the vaccine numbers among the young. The stick comes in the form of proof of a double vaccine for admission to nightclubs and other venues in the autumn. The carrot, which the government is considering, is to offer the young free Uber rides to vaccine centres, as well as pizzas and cinema tickets. Nudging the reluctant to get inoculated is a perfectly acceptable public health policy, given the costs to the NHS and the economy of allowing infections to spread. In America, President Joe Biden has authorised states to offer $100 as an incentive to get the jab.
There is, however, a second way in which this country could squander our vaccination advantage. The welcome fall in new infections since “freedom day” on July 19 has demonstrated that, even when the rules change, people do not immediately throw caution to the wind. Common sense prevails.
And yet, when it comes to foreign travel, the government remains in full nanny state mode, and is in danger of disappearing down a rabbit hole of absurdity. Even the double-vaccinated are required to quarantine on returning from France and the foreign secretary and transport secretary cannot agree on whether this is because of a Beta variant outbreak on the French territory of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, or in northern France. The evidence suggests that the variant has not so far been a significant problem in mainland France.
Now it is suggested that Whitehall is looking at putting both Spain and Italy on the so-called amber watchlist and therefore likely at any moment to be treated the same way as France. It is a situation that is not only exasperating the travel industry but inconveniencing millions of people, with knock-on effects on the economy.
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Rishi Sunak, concerned by the consequences of some of the UK’s current “draconian” travel rules, has written to the prime minister calling for them to be scrapped. The chancellor is right to worry. The UK was an outlier in terms of vaccine success. Now it is starting to look like an outlier in Europe when it comes to travel restrictions. The sooner that changes, the better. The government has rightly won praise for the success of the vaccine programme. It will deserve to be attacked if it squanders that success with unnecessary rules.