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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
World
Liam Thorp

Matt Hancock press conference tonight amid vaccines row

Health Secretary Matt Hancock will hold a Downing Street press conference this evening.

Mr Hancock will speak to the nation at 5pm and will be joined by England's Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam.

It will be the first Downing Street press conference for a little while and Mr Hancock is expected to celebrate the nation hitting the 25 million vaccine milestone.

Today the Health Secretary said he was 'delighted' that people aged 50 and above are now able to be invited for a vaccine as the country's roll out continues apace.

But there will be a number of other issues he is likely to be questioned on by journalists or members of the public.

One will be the situation regarding the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and a number of rows developing in Europe.

European countries including France, Germany, Spain and Italy have suspended the administering of the jab and are seeking further clarification of its safety.

But the decision has been criticised, with the European Medical Agency stating that it remains 'firmly convinced' of the benefits of the jab.

Concerns had been raised by some nations regarding blood clots in some patients, but the head of the EMA said that at present there is no indication that vaccination has caused these conditions.

The World Health Organisation has also said there is no evidence to link the vaccine to blood clots and urged the European countries to continue with their roll-out.

In the UK, more than 11 million people have already received at least one dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine and there has been no sign of excess deaths or blood clots occurring.

In another European row, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also raised the heat with the UK by threatening to slam the brakes on vaccine exports.

The European Commission president said "all options are on the table" as far as export controls on Covid-19 vaccines, in a bid to safeguard jabs for the bloc's own citizens facing a third wave of the pandemic.

And she invited the UK to "show reciprocity" by ensuring promised doses of the AstraZeneca jab are delivered to the bloc.

Meanwhile Mr Hancock could face difficult questions after his department came under brutal attack from Boris Johnson's former top aide. Dominic Cummings took aim at the "smoking ruin" Department of Health today in his first comments since quitting four months ago.

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And appearing to back an inquiry, he said Parliament should have an “urgent, very very hard look into what went wrong and why”.

Mr Cummings told MPs on the Science and Technology Committee: "I and others said repeatedly before 2020 this system is an expensive disaster zone and when it hits a crisis it will completely fall over. That system hit a crisis, and it completely fell over."

He added the Department of Health "had an absolute disaster in terms of buying - how it buys, procures, how it deals with science and technology. It's why we had to take the vaccines process out of the Department of Health".

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