It’s been
manic.
Emails
flooded
in and
we held
extra
clinics
morning and lunchtime, as people try to
slot their jabs in around work.
At the Science Museum in southwest
London, where queues have been wrap-
ping around the block from 6am, volun-
teers are outstripping demand.
“We’ve got more volunteers than we
know what to do with,” said Tania Rut-
kowski, a health services administrator
there. She says the queues each morning
remind her of the wait to get into Glaston-
bury festival.
“Personally, I’d rather go to Glaston-
bury,” she smiled. “But people are seeing
the headlines. They want their jabs.”
The cheerful stoicism of those queuing
for hours in the cold to proffer their arms
for yet another shot is also remarkable.
David Johnson, 59, turned up at the Sci-
ence Museum early on Wednesday for a
walk-in jab but was told to go home after
an hour of queueing. On Thursday heAlcohol bans, vaccine passports and Holland shuts up shop: Europe takes fright
came back, waited for another two
hours, and finally got his shot.
“Waiting around didn’t put me off,
because life is so precious,” Johnson said.
“If you want to stay alive then staying out
in the cold isn’t such a big deal. I feel
happy. I’m alive. I want to stay alive.” Now
that he is boosted, he plans to join his
wife and daughter at their home in Spain
for Christmas.
Laura Fell, from New Malden, first
started volunteering as a vaccination site
marshal at the beginning of this year,
when she found herself on furlough from
her job in corporate live events. She did
two months of volunteering then and has
just restarted at Wallington town hall,
one of many sites now running clinics for
12 hours a day. “I felt just as bleak as I did
last year, like I don’t do anything to help
the bigger picture,” Fell said.
“But once I put the high-vis jacket onand treat people with a bit of kindness
and positivity, I feel like I’m contributing
something and helping the NHS staff who
are doing the really important work.”
She manages the long cold shifts with
thermal socks, gloves and tea flask that
her family bought her. Her hope is that
the hard work done over the past two
weeks can help protect people over the
holidays. “I’m so conscious of Christmas,
it’s all that me and my friends are talking
about,” she said. “It was such a non-event
last year, so if I can help even a couple of
families to feel safe and protect each
other, then it’s worth it.”
It would be so much easier for these
volunteers to be out doing their festive
shopping, or at home snugly watching
television and avoiding exposure. But
instead they are joining what Johnson
called the “great national fightback”, giv-
ing Britain a decent chance of strugglingDutch to
close
shops,
schools
and
cinemas
TOBY MELVILLE/REUTERS
people in the country of 5.
million people were reported
to have tested positive for
Covid by the Statens Serum
Institut, a ministry of health
body in charge of combatting
infectious diseases.
About half of Denmark’s
cases appear to be caused by
Omicron, said Troels
Lillebaek, a professor at the
institute who heads the
committee that assesses new
variants of Covid. “By the first
or the second week of
January it will be all
Omicron, but it may be
earlier than that, given how
fast it is increasing, doubling
every second or third day,” he
said.
More than 80 per cent of
Danes have been double
jabbed, and more than one in
five have had a booster; the
Central Jutland region is one
of several areas where troops
are being called in to speed
up the process.
Although Denmark’s case
numbers seem high, they
largely reflect the extent and
the sophistication of the
Covid testing regime. On a
typical day, 430,000 people
are tested — more than 7 per
cent of the population —
several times the number in
most other EU countries.
Lillebaek said: “Denmark isJust three months ago
Denmark became the first
country in the EU to lift all
Covid restrictions, declaring
the virus “no longer a critical
threat to society”. Hailing
vaccines as a “super
weapon”, the prime minister,
Mette Frederiksen, spoke of
her “clear expectation that
we can avoid major
lockdowns in the future”.
This weekend, however,
the country faces something
closely approaching a
lockdown in response to the
rapid spread of the Omicron
variant: from this morning,
theatres, cinemas, concert
halls and Copenhagen’s Tivoli
amusement park will be
closed, there will be limits on
numbers in shops and
restaurants and greater
compulsory use of masks.
Soldiers are being drafted in
to help with vaccinations.
“Omicron has changed the
rules of the game,”
Frederiksen told a news
conference on Friday
announcing the restrictions,
which came after schools
were required to shift to
remote learning for the last
few days of term.
The prime minister was
speaking as a record 11,Peter Conradi Europe Editor no more a centre of Omicron
than any other country. It is
just that in Denmark we are
looking for it.”
Norway, which tests and
sequences as enthusiastically
as Denmark, has responded
by banning the sale of alcohol
in bars, restaurants and
clubs, ordering people to
work from home where
possible and introducing
tighter restrictions on
schools. It has also
reintroduced social
distancing and the use of
masks and recommended
people cut down on social
gatherings and have a
maximum of 10 visitors at
home.
Neighbouring Sweden has
required those travelling
from other Nordic countries
to show vaccine passports — a
rule already in force for those
coming from elsewhere.France
France has
recorded only 300
or so cases of
Omicron — and used Britain’s
much higher reported
infection rate as justification
for travel rules that came into
force from midnight on
Friday barring holidaymakers
and others from the UK from
visiting France without aviolent antivaxers who are
especially strong in Saxony,
in the former east.
Authorities in Dresden, the
state’s capital, said last week
that they had seized guns and
crossbows from a group of
five men and one woman who
allegedly plotted on the
Telegram messenger service
to kill Michael Kretschmer,
Saxony’s premier, because of
his support for restrictions.
Reported daily cases, at
just over 50,000 a day have
been relatively stable over the
past week, but experts say
they underestimate the real
extent of infection because so
few tests are done.Holland
People across
Holland rushed to
the shops
yesterday amid media reports
that the government would
reintroduce a hard lockdown.
Starting at 5am today and
running until at least January
14, schools and non-essential
shops will be closed, as will
cinemas and theatres.
Cases have fallen in recent
days, in response to earlier,
more modest restrictions,
which prompted violent
protests in a number of Dutch
cities.
@Peter_ConradiThere were
queues for the
Eurostar at St
Pancras on Friday
as passengers
headed for
France before
rules barring
most Britons took
effectfrom home, while only those
who have been vaccinated or
have recently recovered from
Covid-19 will be allowed into
bars and restaurants.Austria
Cases in Austria
fell sharply after
its government
took the dramatic step last
month of locking down first
the unvaccinated — and a
week later, everyone else.
Most of the restrictions were
lifted last Sunday, as planned,
but, fearful of the spread of
Omicron, the government
almost immediately
toughened quarantine for
those who have come into
contact with anyone who has
tested positive.
Vaccination will become
compulsory for all adults
from February 1; anyone
refusing will face a fine of up
to €3,600 (£3,060).Germany
Olaf Scholz, the
new chancellor,
has said he would
like to follow Austria’s
example and make
vaccination compulsory. The
move is set to be
controversial and will be
resisted by a small number of
militant and increasinglyAustria, according to Our
World in Data.
Jean Castex, the prime
minister, said on Friday that
the variant was “spreading at
lightning speed” in Europe
and would probably become
dominant in France by next
monthSwitzerland
The country,
which has so far
taken a largely
libertarian approach to
Covid, has finally decided to
take tough action, faced with
surging cases and one of the
lowest vaccination rates in
Europe; only just over two-
thirds of the population have
been double jabbed.
From tomorrow, everyone
who can will have to work“compelling reason”.
The number of overall
cases of Covid has passed
60,000 a day; more than
15,000 are in hospital, with a
further 1,000 or so joining
them each day.
But French estimates of the
extent of the spread of the
Omicron are probably a
“considerable
underestimate”, said
Mahmoud Zureik, an
epidemiologist, noting that
the country’s laboratories do
only a fifth of the amount of
sequencing as Britain’s.
Overall level of testing in
France is also relatively low:
for every 1,000 people in
France, 11.77 tests are carried
out every day, compared with
18.03 in the UK, 34.59 in
Denmark and 38.77 inWaiting
around
didn’t
put me
off
because
life is so
precious
U
sually when you find a crowd
walking purposefully towards
Stamford Bridge on a Saturday
afternoon in December, it
means Chelsea are about to
give someone a festive roast-
ing. But yesterday afternoon,
thousands headed to the foot-
ball stadium with a rather more pressing
goal: scoring a booster jab before Christ-
mas.
For Terry Komatsu, 33, a season ticket
holder and dedicated Chelsea fan, it was
a striking change of scene. “Today I saw a
totally different Stamford Bridge,” he
said. “We were queuing not for football
but to protect ourselves. To be honest it
was quite strange, but I was really proud
of the club for doing this.”
Stamford Bridge is one of several stadi-
ums and municipal sites across the coun-
try that has been converted to a pop-up
mass vaccination centre this weekend, as
millions seek protection from the Omi-
cron variant and to give themselves a
fighting chance of celebrating Christmas
with family. Amid the gloom and anxiety,
this is a phenomenal mobilisation.
Wembley Stadium and The Valley,
home of Charlton FC, are also both open-
ing their turnstiles this weekend as part
of the booster drive. When Stamford
Bridge’s gates opened at 10am, a queue of
mostly younger people reached back
almost to the hallowed Chelsea Pen-
sioner pub, all of them hunting for a
walk-in booster. “I couldn’t find any slots
this side of Christmas on the booking sys-
tem,” said Sonia, 29. “I saw a few walk-ins
advertised during the week but couldn’t
make them, so this is really convenient.”
This remarkable collective mission is
underpinned by NHS staff going through
yet another round of pandemic bedlam,
assisted by tens of thousands of volun-
teers determined to help stem the Covid
tide. Boris Johnson’s ambitious one-mil-
lion-a-day target has not been reached
yet, but 861,306 boosters were given on
Thursday alone. All over the country,JOSH
GLANCYSpecial Correspondent6CORONAVIRUS
people are donning hi-vis jackets and
heading out into the winter cold to do
their bit.
When Johnson went on television to
launch an “Omicron emergency appeal”
last Sunday for one million booster jabs a
day, Peter Garwood braced himself for
the inevitable.
He co-ordinates vaccine volunteers at
the Alfred Barrow Health Centre in Bar-
row-in-Furness, and the prime minister’s
appeal meant immediately rallying the
troops for yet another marathon week.
“It’s been absolutely bloody manic,”
he said. “Emails just came flooding in
from volunteers, new and old. By Tues-
day we had loads of extra clinics
arranged.” He says the centre is now
doing as many as 1,300 jabs on busy days.
Garwood’s a veteran: he estimates he’s
done 980 hours of volunteering since the
pandemic began, and that his team have
racked up more than 10,000 hours. With
this help, the Alfred Barrow centre has
been able to deliver more than 85,
jabs in total; he is contemplating a bottle
of bubbly for when they hit 100,000.
Garwood, 65, began volunteering
when his small hotel closed during the
first lockdown, although his age puts him
at potentially serious risk from Covid.
“It gave me something worthwhile to
get up for,” he says. “So I wasn’t just hoov-
ering from my bedroom to the front desk
and back again.”
It’s not just volunteers joining the
fight: all manner of people are chipping
in where they can. At Barrow-in-Furness,
Morrisons, Asda and Tesco are providing
Garwood and his team of more than 100
volunteers, many of them fellow Rotary
club members, with tea bags, coffee,
sugar and crates of bottled water. A local
bakery, Green’s, has been delivering its
renowned hot meat and potato pies to
outdoor volunteers, helping them fend
off the Cumbrian chill.
At the Waldron medical centre in New
Cross, southeast London, a coffee van is
offering free coffee to everyone after
their booster shot. In Slough, children as
young as ten have been baking trays of
cookies to give to volunteers. Chester
Cathedral and Manchester town hall are
both being used as vaccination centres.
The vaccination centre opposite the
Oval cricket ground in south London has
been breaking its own jab record, topping
3,000 a day last week. The queue has
been snaking around the ground everyAll we
want for
Christmas...
An incredible volunteering
effort has put three million jabs
in Britons’ arms in a week.
How uplifting it was to witness
DINENDRA HARIA/LNP