People in their forties are due to be invited for vaccinations from tomorrow after the government reached its target to offer jabs to everyone in the nine priority groups.
Only the late forties are expected to be called first in what sources described as an “easing into” the second phase of the vaccination programme.
Government scientists are also considering whether offering priority vaccination to regular travellers who are exempt from quarantine rules would help to reduce the risk of importing dangerous variants. Premier League footballers, hauliers and diplomats are among those who could be vaccinated earlier, in a plan that is understood to be at an early stage of discussion.
Ministers promised that 32 million people in the priority groups, which includes everyone over 50 and younger people with chronic conditions, would be offered vaccination by April 15.
With more than 32 million people vaccinated in the UK, the government is preparing to announce that the target has been achieved two days early and appointments will be opened up to younger people.
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Initial appointments may only be for people aged 49 with younger people told to book in for later in the month. Doses of the Moderna vaccine are due to become widely available in England this week and officials were last night calculating how many of all three vaccines now being used will be available for people under 50 this week.
Approval for the single-shot Janssen vaccine, of which Britain has ordered 30 million doses, is also expected in the coming days. Government sources suggested that everyone in the priority groups had actually been contacted two weeks ago, with recent days devoted to encouraging the hesitant to come forward.
Efforts are continuing to ensure maximum take-up in a group that accounted for 99 per cent of Covid-19 deaths and about 85 per cent of hospital admissions.
A period of national mourning for the Duke of Edinburgh means that Boris Johnson will not be able to trumpet the achievement at a press conference as originally planned, although the prime minister is expected to issue a statement to mark the milestone.
The NHS is focusing on second doses for the most vulnerable with a record 475,230 administered on Saturday as well as 111,109 first doses
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Ministers had said that a supply slowdown would mean April was “second dose month” with very few first doses available as booster jabs for people vaccinated at the start of the programme began to fall due.
However, supplies are expected to pick up again later this month and health chiefs are now more optimistic that this will allow the vaccination programme to move on to the second phase.
Supply constraints mean that not everyone in their forties is likely to be invited at once in what is described as “easing into rather than charging into” the next stage.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is due to issue its final advice on the second phase of the programme early this week, formally allowing the NHS to proceed. Draft guidance issued in February said that phase ten of the programme would be people aged 40-49, followed by those aged 30-39 and finally those aged 18-29.
Variants that may mean vaccines work less well have become a concern as the country opens up and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) concluded last month that border controls would slow, but not prevent, importation of new strains from places where they are more common.
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Thousands of people in jobs requiring them to travel regularly have total or partial exemptions from quarantine rules and Sage concluded that “the more people who are exempt from border measures, the higher the risk of undetected importation of a new variant”.
