The Government should be preparing to give Britons fourth, fifth and sixth Covid vaccinations to prepare for future waves of the virus, a senior Conservative has said.
Tobias Ellwood, the chairman of the defence select committee, indicated he will vote against Covid certification measures today, and expressed his concern that the booster rollout “will place further strain on our already exhausted NHS infrastructure”.
“I think we should be looking in years, not in months,” he told the Today programme. “We are going to need a fourth, a fifth, a sixth jab in readiness for further waves. We created a Brexit department, we created a climate change department.
“Why not create a new department with a Secretary of State with a new bespoke infrastructure, with a standalone national vaccination workforce? That’s what I’d like to see.”
On vaccine passports, Mr Ellwood said: “You can go into a large venue with a recent negative lateral flow test, again that makes sense. But you can also show up if you had proof of having two jabs, which may have been completed at least six months ago. So even with this new mutation you could still be carrying Covid.”
