the times | Saturday December 18 2021 2GM 17News
parts of the country is thought to be a
cause.the conspiracists
The booster drive and the introduction
of vaccine passports have reinvigorated
a small but vocal core of evangelical
antivaxers, who have taken to the
streets in an attempt to prevent people
from being jabbed.
One group, called Footsoldiers 4
Freedom, have visited more than 100
schools in the past few months, hand-
ing out leaflets and performing songs
that urge people not to get jabbed.
“They’re small in number but they
have large voices. They’re agitating and
disturbing others,” says Larson. It will
be impossible to change their minds,
she believes. “But we need to really
build some resilience among the school
teachers and the students.”
There are signs the activists are be-
coming increasingly radical. This week,
antivaxers filmed themselves as they
berated those queueing for a booster
jab. Darren Smith, a Manchester musi-
cian who sometimes goes by the name
of Darren Nesbit, promotes the con-
spiracy through the newspaper he edits
called The Light, which has a monthly
print run of 240,000, higher than that of
many established periodicals.
Additional reporting by Tom Ball and
Matilda Davies
Unvaccinated should bear costs of their
refusal, leading article, page 41Ministers have been accused of being
too late to speed up the booster pro-
gramme as projections suggest that
Boris Johnson’s target to vaccinate all
adults by the end of the year will be
missed by more than two weeks.
Even the record levels of booster dos-
es this week will not be enough to vacci-
nate all eligible adults by the end of the
year, estimates by The Times suggest.
The NHS is on course to deliver more
than a million doses today for the first
time. Ministers say that the UK has
Europe’s fastest booster programme.
But critics including Jeremy Hunt,
the former health secretary, say that
government and scientific advisers
acted too slowly to get the booster pro-
gramme going during the autumn.
They say that ministers should have
been planning for a vaccine-resistant
variant such as Omicron to emerge.
Johnson ordered an expansion of the
booster programme last Sunday as he
said that he wanted everybody eligible
to have a dose by New Year’s Eve. GPs
and hospitals have been postponing
routine care to open clinics.
At the current seven-day average, it
would take until January 25 to reach all
adults. Since Monday booster doses
have averaged 639,000 a day, a rate that
would reach all double-vaccinated
adults by January 14. Some people will
not be eligible because they have had
Covid or were vaccinated less than
three months ago. Excluding them, the
target could be reached on January 11.
GP surgeries and pharmacies provid-
ing Covid vaccinations will be paid an
extra £5 per jab between Christmas and
the new year to try to meet the target.
The fee per jab will be £20 for Monday-
Saturday between December 25 and
January 3. An initial increase from the
previous rate of £12.58 to £15 was an-Children at risk of rare
post-viral inflammation
Kat Lay Health EditorChildren’s doctors say there could be a
fresh wave of cases of a rare post-viral
inflammatory syndrome next month.
The condition, Paediatric Inflamma-
tory Multisystem Syndrome (Pims),
occurs between four and six weeks after
virus infection. It is not yet known what
impact Omicron will have.
Dr Phil Riley, who leads Pims ser-
vices at the Royal Manchester Child-
ren’s Hospital, said it was extremely
rare, occurring in one in every two to
three thousand infections in children.
But he added: “With the rate of Cov-
id-19 infection increasing, we will see a
rise in Pims in four to six weeks.”
Riley said parents should be alert to
symptoms including an extremely high
fever, conjunctivitis, a rash, painful lips,
and “excruciating abdominal pain”
about a month after exposure to Covid-- Many children will have been as-
ymptomatic with the initial infection.
Children with Pims may need treat-
ment in paediatric intensive care.
There have been a handful of UK
deaths from the condition.
“They’re pretty sick these kids, but it
is all hyper inflammation, and it’s very
treatable,” Riley said.
He said there did not appear to be
lasting physical damage, but many
children were left fatigued and with
psychological trauma. He called for
national funding for Pims services.
Dr Liz Whittaker, senior clinical lec-
turer in paediatric infectious diseases
and immunology at Imperial College
London, said there were fewer Pims
cases than expected in the Delta waves
in the UK and America, and was hope-
ful it would be the same for Omicron.
She said: “We would expect to be
getting a signal from South Africa in the
next week.”
Infection surveys indicate that many
children have had the coronavirus, but
Whittaker said it was unclear whether
immunity from prior infection, or vac-
cination, would protect against Pims.
Whittaker said that “this is still a very
rare complication” but advised parents
to ring 111 or seek emergency care if
they were worried about their child.
“Although the children are really sig-
nificantly unwell, we understand how
to manage it, and they have really good
outcomes, and they do well,” she said.Target date for
adult boosters
‘is out of reach’
Chris Smyth Whitehall Editor
Anna Lombardi, Ryan WattsHow Britain compares
Percentage of population who have
received at least one vaccine dose
(total doses administered in brackets)Daily
(Dec 16)
First dose
3,Boosters
(daily)
121,Second
46.9mSecond
4,Total
25,598,First dose
51.4mPeople
vaccinated
in UKSource: Our World in Data (latest figures available) and gov.uk.
Note: Selected countries. Figures as of 6pm yesterdayUAE 99.0% (22.2m)
Portugal 89.0% (18.6m)Malta 84.8% (1m)Spain 82.6% (82.1m)Canada 82.3% (64.3m)
Italy 79.1% (104.3m)Australia 78.7% (40.9m)Ireland 77.8% (8.8m)
France 77.6% (115.3m)UK 75.6% (123.8m)United goalkeeper spoke to The Times
about how he later convinced some of
his hesitant team-mates to get vacci-
nated.
Another big driver of vaccine refusal
is a belief that “natural” immunity
through infection is just as good as a jab.
Focus groups have found that people
who have flat-out refused Covid vacci-
nes tend to stress a preference for natu-
ral immunity (alongside concerns over
side effects and a distrust in govern-
ment).
Professor Danny Altmann of Imperi-
al College said: “If I’d had an infection a
year or more ago, I wouldn’t feel at all
secure that I had a sufficient level of
neutralising antibodies still on
board to confer any protection ...
The gold standard for protective
immunity is prior infection plus
three-dose vaccination.”parents
In mid-September the chief
medical officers of En-
gland, Wales, Scotland
and Northern Ireland
said that 12- to 15-year-
olds should get a first
dose of the Pfizer jab.
So far, only about 45
per cent of them have
been vaccinated.
Resistance from
parents has been a
factor. BeverleyTurner, a radio presenter, said that she
was “appalled but not shocked” when
the UK’s medical regulator approved
the vaccine for children in June.
“The risk of Covid-19 to them is tiny.
Do we now live in a world where
parents can’t tolerate their child devel-
oping a sniffle? They are not guinea
pigs to be used in an experiment,” she
said. Writing in the Sunday Times, she
reeled off a list of concerns: there was
no long-term safety data on the jabs,
and the technologies had not been used
before, she said.londoners
Many of the factors fuelling low
uptake converge in the capi-
tal. A third of Londoners are
completely unvaccinated –
and the 14 areas with the
country’s lowest vaccina-
tion rates are all boroughs
of the city. In Westminster
four in ten people have not
had a single jab.
NHS chiefs have been
frustrated since the
start of the vaccination
programme with how
London has lagged
behind. A more tran-
sient population that
lacks the personal links
to GP surgeries that
have helped ensure
stronger take-up in otherNews
jab refuseniks?
nounced at the end of November.
Hunt, the health select committee
chairman, criticised the Joint Commit-
tee on Vaccination and Immunisation
(JCVI) for not recommending a wider
booster programme in September. The
JCVI said that it made sense to focus on
older people and it widened the pro-
gramme once Omicron appeared.
Ministers also argue that it was vital
in the autumn for the NHS to focus on
clearing a post-pandemic backlog.
6 Britain missed a chance to get early
access to Covid drugs that could keep
people out of hospital, scientists and
business leaders say. A Pfizer pill, Pax-
lovid, that can cut hospital admissions
by 88 per cent will not be available until
after winter and Britain ordered only
250,000 courses, compared with ten
million going to America. Penny Ward,
professor of pharmaceutical medicine
at King’s College London, said: “We
didn’t set up the antivirals task force
until this year, which was late.”