UK sees Omicron tidal wave; to deploy army for booster jabs

London, Dec 13: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared live in his address to the nation on BBC on Sunday night and announced rolling out 1m booster jabs a day to stem an incoming “tidal wave of Omicron”.

He also said that the army will be deployed across the country to help rapidly accelerate the vaccine programme and GPs will be told to cancel appointments to dedicate resources to offering vaccines to every UK adult by the end of December.

In the televised address, the prime minister said he was “afraid we are now facing an emergency in our battle with the new variant, Omicron, and we must urgently reinforce our wall of vaccine protection to keep our friends and loved ones safe.”

It means vaccinating around 1 million people a day, up from 530,000 on Saturday. The UK record was 844,000 in March. All over-18s will be eligible from Monday, initially for walk-ins, and bookings will open from Wednesday. Until now eligibility has been limited to over-40s.

Jabs will be available on Christmas Day, though demand is expected to be low.

On Sunday the Covid alert level was raised from three to four, indicating substantial pressure on the NHS, after a further 1,239 UK cases of Omicron were confirmed, nearly double the number reported the previous day. Omicron is expected to become Britain’s dominant variant within days, and Johnson warned it could “overwhelm the NHS and lead to very many deaths”.

Announcing the booster offensive, Johnson said: “We know from bitter experience how these exponential curves develop. No one should be in any doubt: there is a tidal wave of Omicron coming.” He said two doses of vaccine were not enough, but scientists were confident that three would make a huge difference.

On Friday UK data suggested that three jabs provide 70-75% protection against infection with Omicron, while two doses given three or more months ago give 30% or less.