Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi has suggested that a gradual easing of lockdown restrictions will not begin before early March.
He told BBC Breakfast: “If we take the mid-February target, two weeks after that you get your protection, pretty much, for the Pfizer/BioNTech, three weeks for the Oxford/AstraZeneca, you are protected.
“One of the things we don’t know yet, and the deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam is on record as saying ‘look give me a couple of months and I’ll tell you’, is the impact of the vaccine on transmission rates ie on infecting people.
“So there are a number of caveats that stand in the way of us reopening the economy.
“It will be gradual, it will be probably through the tiered system but you’re looking at that sort of period, two to three weeks after the middle of February, after we’ve protected the top four cohorts.”
The Government has said it will review lockdown in England on February 22, and the legislation could run until March 31.
Some lockdown measure look set to stay in place for months ahead - possibly until autumn - with the spectre of more restrictions next winter.
