Vaccines Minister Maggie Throup urges boosters ‘for sake of loved ones’ amid gaps in major cities

The Vaccines Minister today urged people to set aside distrust in the government and get the booster jab for the sake of loved ones.

Maggie Throup pointed to the national programme as ‘the way out of the pandemic’ shortly before Boris Johnson announced an end to Plan B measures from next Thursday.

Mrs Throup spoke to Metro.co.uk as part of a drive to plug the gaps in the take-up of doses in some of England’s biggest cities.

Official figures show the rate of those receiving a booster or third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine is below 50% in Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester, Newcastle and central London.

In Manchester, 37.8% of people aged 12 and over have had the latest round, compared with 67% who have had the first.

The number sinks even lower in Newham, east London, where the count is 30.3% of the population up to January 19, 2022.

By contrast, North Norfolk, East Devon and the New Forest have rates of 74% and above, according to the government’s coronavirus dashboard.

While tens of millions of people have been vaccinated, the disparities have led the government to allocate £22.5 million to fund vaccine volunteers to drive uptake in harder-to-reach communities.

Mrs Throup said: ‘I want to thank all the vaccine supporters and volunteers who have done sterling work over the last year to get all these jabs in people’s arms.

‘We are seeing lower uptake in mainly the cities, so Birmingham, London, Manchester and obviously it does concern us because we know the best way for people to protect themselves is to get the jab.

‘We have got various measures in place and I’ve visited a number of vaccination sites in these locations. It’s trying to make it convenient for people, so for example I went to a vaccination site in London that was in a library, so really in the heart of the community.

‘And on Monday I visited a site in Manchester at the Etihad tennis centre.

‘They are really reaching out to different cohorts, different groups and they have done a lot of work in the community with people where English isn’t their first language to explain the importance of getting the vaccine and have held special clinics for the ethnic minorities. That’s really worked, it’s working out what the barriers are and overcoming those barriers.’

Hesitancy among ethnic groups has been identified as a factor keeping rates down in some cities, but there are multiple overlapping reasons why people are not coming forward. They are thought to also include misinformation, concerns about side-effects and complacency.

The possible consequences of remaining unvaccinated were driven home in a Sky interview shared online by NHS England, where a patient who spent two months in intensive care spoke from his hospital bed. Jasem Nissi, 48, admitted he was ‘lazy’ about getting the booster, which was a ‘big mistake’.

The drive to address the disparities comes as Mr Johnson faces calls to resign amid the partygate row and the stream of reports about Christmas parties at Whitehall and in Downing Street, which took place when the public was being urged to abide by Covid restrictions.

Mrs Throup said: ‘I understand why people are angry and upset.

‘The prime minister has apologised to the House and the wider public, I think it’s important now that we wait for the outcome of Sue Gray’s report.

‘She’s a formidable lady, but what it boils down to now is for people to get their vaccine to protect themselves, to protect the people that they love and that they socialise with all the time.’

The Plan B measures introduced in December, including mandatory face coverings in most indoor public spaces, Covid passes for specific venues and advice to work from home, will end when the rules expire.

Mrs Throup said: ‘The vaccine programme is our way out of the pandemic, I think it has proven that. If you look at the high rates of Omicron over the last few weeks there have been very high rates across the country and yet we haven’t seen the hospitalisations we would have expected.

‘To me, that’s down to the vaccination programme.’

Mrs Throup also warned about misinformation spread via social media that has been blamed for preventing people from attending clinics.

‘There are units that look at this all this time and there is no place at all for people who spread misinformation because that can cost lives,’ she said.

At Prime Minister’s Questions today, Mr Johnson hailed the vaccine drive as a world-leading programme and addressed the shortfalls.

He said: ‘At the moment it’s not actually hesitancy, it’s more apathy that’s the problem. Because Omicron is seen wrongly to be a mild disease people are not getting the vaccine in the way that they might.

‘We need to break down apathy with those groups. The numbers are rising the whole time, but we want them to rise faster.’

According to the official figures, 36.5 million people have had their booster or third dose, compared with just over 52 million who have had their first.

The overall number of people testing positive in the seven days to January 18 stood at 673,987, a drop of 38.9%

Deaths of people testing positive have increased to 1,904 over the same period, a rise of 14.7%, according to the figures.

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