Coronavirus news – live: Double-jabbed half as likely to have long Covid as NHS ‘ready’ to vaccinate children
Latest developments as they happen
Being double-jabbed almost halves the likelihood of long Covid in adults who get coronavirus, a new study has suggested.
Researchers at King’s College London also said that being admitted to hospital with the virus was 73 per cent less likely, and the chances of severe symptoms were reduced by almost a third (31 per cent) in the fully vaccinated.
The team analysed data from more than two million people logging their symptoms, tests and vaccine status on the UK Zoe Covid Symptom Study app between 8 December 2020 and 4 July this year.
It comes as Gavin Williamson said there was the capacity to give Covid vaccinations to 12 to 15-year-olds as well as a booster programme for adults.
The education secretary said the decision was not “either/or” and insisted the NHS was “ready to go into schools and deliver that vaccination programme for children” when given the go-ahead by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
Vaccines produced in South Africa to stay in Africa
The Covid envoy to the African Union, Strive Masiyiwa has announced that vaccine doses produced by a plant in South Africa will stay in the continent and no longer be exported to Europe.
Mr Masiyiwa told reporters that South African drug manufacturer Aspen, which has a contract with Johnson & Johnson, will stop shipping doses of the vaccine out of the continent.
He added that millions of doses produced by the plant and warehoused in Europe will be returned to Africa.
“That arrangement has been suspended,” he said, going on to add that J&J doses produced in South Africa “will stay in Africa and will be distributed in Africa” and saying that the issue had been “corrected in a positive way.”
The news comes following criticism of Johnson & Johnson for shipping doses of the jab to European countries, where large numbers of people have already been immunised.
Jeremy Hunt urges UK to offer Covid booster jabs to all adults
The UK needs to “get on with” its Covid-19 booster vaccine programme and should offer the additional jabs “not just to the clinically vulnerable, but to everyone”, former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has said.
He made the remarks in the wake of revelations on Wednesday that around half a million Britons aged 12 and over, who have severely weakened immune systems and are most at risk from Covid, would be offered a third dose of vaccine, following a recommendation from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
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