Boris Johnson has called for people across the UK to be “optimistic but also patient” about the country's path out of lockdown.
He told a Downing Street press conference next week’s “road map” would set out “as much as we possibly can about the route to normality, even though some things are very uncertain”.
The Prime Minister said: “We want this lockdown to be the last. And we want progress to be cautious but also irreversible.”
Johnson said there were still more hospital patients with Covid-19 than at the peak of the first wave and admissions were running at 1,600 a day across the UK.
He said: “We have to keep our foot to the floor.”
The next million invitation letters were offering appointments for a vaccine to the over-65s and those aged 16-64 with underlying conditions, as well as adult carers.
“If we can keep this pace up and if we can keep supply steady – and I hope and believe we can – then we hope to offer a vaccination to everyone in the first nine priority groups, including everyone over 50, by the end of April.”
He added there were “grounds for confidence” that vaccines were helping to curb the spread of coronavirus, not just in protecting those who received the jab.
The Tory leader continued: “Although the vaccination programme is going well, we still don’t have enough data about the exact effectiveness of the vaccinations in reducing the spread of infection.
“We have some interesting straws in the wind, we have some grounds for confidence but the vaccinations have only been running for a matter of weeks.
“While we are learning the whole time, we don’t, as I talk to you today, have all the hard facts that we need.
“And the level of infection remains very high.”
