Professor Sir Mark Walport, former chief scientific adviser to the Government, said the move to continue the rollout of coronavirus vaccines in age order, rather than prioritising the frontline professions, “makes sense”.
He told BBC Breakfast: “We are building on an incredibly successful rollout, so over 19 million people have had the jab and the choice has been made to try and reduce as much as possible people getting serious disease and potentially dying.
“We know that the vulnerability goes particularly with age. There are also younger people who have been in the priority groups who have other serious illnesses, so it makes sense.
“The rollout is going in such an efficient way by doing it through the ages. Of course, there will be many teachers, many police, who are in the 40-50 age group and indeed who will have been immunised already. So, it does make sense.”
Prof Walport said: “It’s still the case that most of the vulnerability, including in those professions which mix with a lot of people, is still with the older members of those cohorts, and so this is a strategy that maximises the number of vaccines and does it on a basis of the most vulnerable.”
: “An age-related rollout fits with where people get the worst disease and are at higher risk of dying.”
