'UK administered 2.4M doses of Covid-19 vaccine so far'

LONDON

Britain has administered more than 2.4 million doses of coronavirus vaccine so far, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Monday.

Johnson confirmed that around “40% of the 80-year-olds in this country” have already been vaccinated.

Speaking at a vaccination center in Bristol, Johnson said they have vaccinated “about 23% of the elderly residents of care homes."

He said: "As I speak to you today, we've done about 2 million people, maybe a bit more, about 2.4 million jabs all in, I think, across the whole of the UK."

Johnson also said the National Health Service (NHS) would be "ramping that up massively."

However, he also warned about the “false confidence” that might put a further burden on hospitals.

He said: "This is a very perilous moment because everybody can sense that the vaccine is coming in and they can see that the UK is vaccinating large numbers of those that need it most.

"My worry is ... that this is the moment when that degree of false confidence, false complacency, and that when you look at what has happened in the NHS that complacency is not merited."

The government has pledged to administer the first dose of coronavirus vaccine to 15 million of the most vulnerable across the UK by mid-February.

New vaccination centers in London, Bristol, Surrey, Newcastle, Manchester, Stevenage, and Birmingham have been set up since last week to increase the pace of the vaccination program. The health officials target administering 200,000 jabs a day and 1 million per week in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, Downing Street said it would “continue to look at that data and to monitor it and keep our measures under review," amid calls to toughen measures due to the seriousness of the country’s situation.

The daily number of new infections has soared to more than 50,000 for more than a week, and 417,570 people were tested positive within the last seven days.

More than 80,000 people have lost their lives since the start of the pandemic in the UK.