All adults in England are expected to be offered a Covid vaccine by the end of the week. The country lags just slightly behind Wales which opened up vaccine bookings for all over-18s on Monday. Sky News has the story.
Sir Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of the NHS in England, said the health service hoped to “finish the job” of vaccinating people over the next month.
He told the NHS Confederation conference: “It is now very important that we use the next four weeks to finish the job to the greatest extent possible for the Covid vaccination programme…
“By July 19th we aim to have offered perhaps two-thirds of adults across the country double jabs.”
He also said that from today 23 and 24 year-olds would be able to book an appointment.
“I expect that by the end of this week, we’ll be able to open up the National Booking Service to all adults age 18 and above,” added Sir Simon…
Sir Simon also told the NHS conference that new treatments for people with Covid were expected in the coming months.
“We expect that we will begin to see further therapies that will actually treat coronavirus and prevent severe illness and death,” he said.
“Today I’m asking the health service to gear up for what is likely to be a new category of such treatments – so-called neutralising monoclonal antibodies – which are potentially going to become available to us within the next several months.”
The NHS England boss said community services would be needed to deliver the infusion to people before they are hospitalised, and typically within three days of infection.
The treatment aims to “neutralise” the virus in infected patients and prevent serious disease.
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