Vaccine deployment minister Nadhim Zahawi says the aim is to get 95% of the adult population vaccinated for Covid.
Addressing the Women and Equalities Committee, he said the vaccine programme was around a third of the way through the 32 million people in the priority risk groups.
He added that as more data becomes available on transmission, the “narrative” could change to encourage people to take up their jabs to protect their loved ones.
“As we get more and more positive data around the impact of the vaccination programme on transmission, I think that will also play into that narrative, ie: ‘You’re doing it because you’re going to protect your family, your friends, their family and your community’,” he said.
Mr Zahawi added: “I think we also have to remember that we’re only a third of the way (through) phase one.
“(We will) keep refreshing and flexing our messaging as we see the evidence emerging so that we do ultimately get to where we all want to get to – which is that sort of 94/95% of the adult population vaccinated.”
Mr Zahawi said there was to be a “big uplift” in vaccine supply in coming weeks.
“In the second half of March you will see a big uplift in supply.
“Up until now supply has been finite – we’ve had good volumes but when your supply is finite you have to make try and make sure that each region gets enough doses to do the cohort target – so when we were focused on (priority groups) one to four by the middle of February, we have to make sure that each region have that vaccine available to them.
“Now, obviously as we see more – and I’m expecting 10s of millions of doses to come through – that becomes a little bit easier which allows us, for example, to double the number of pharmacies that will come online for delivery.
“We’ve got over 200 already delivering – they’ve been proven to be incredibly effective because they’re very much part of our community, the way GPs are as well.
“We’re about to double that number by the end of March, so I’m confident we’ve got big numbers.
“The whole country will see a rapid increase in the number of people getting their first dose and getting protected whilst obviously we do second dosing at the same time.”
