England’s deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam has said he does not mind being called ‘JVT’ by Government ministers.
He told Good Morning Britain: “I don’t mind… in actual fact, behind the scenes, everyone calls me JVT.
“It is just what I’m known as within the whole Government ecosystem, but really going years before that, that’s kind of professionally how I’ve been referred to, and it’s absolutely fine.”
On the issue of whether vaccines would work against all variants, he said there was good evidence they worked against the dominant strains in the UK, including the Kent strain.
He added: “Do we have direct data that they’re going to work against (South) Africa or Brazil? No we don’t.
“We have some evidence from the clinical trials for some of the vaccines, but until really these vaccines come up against those new variants in large scale, we’ll have to wait for those answers.
“But I still think they’re going to reduce the likelihood of having severe disease.”
Professor Van-Tam told Good Morning Britain his family find his celebrity status “quite amusing” but he wants to “just go back to being a normal human being”.
And the deputy chief medical officer revealed he is primed for questions about whether he has a tattoo.
He told presenters Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid: “I’m primed for this because I think you’re very clever. I get up at seven o’clock and see what mood you two are in and see how much of a bashing I’m going to get at eight o’clock.
“Seriously, on tattoos, the subject does come up quite regularly in the Van-Tam household.
“But it’s about whether, when the moment is right, when all this pressure is finished and maybe I’m in a quieter phase of my career, I’ll have a little left deltoid BUFC (for Boston United Football Club).”
