Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said at today’s Downing Street press conference that the vaccination programme has helped to sever the links between Covid-19 infection and serious illness.

The minister said that vaccines were “our way out of this pandemic” and had so far prevented 44,500 hospitalisations in England, as well as having saved over 14,000 lives.

He praised communities for promoting uptake of the vaccine and said that young people had been particularly receptive, with six jab appointments booked every second in the first two days after the programme had opened up to over-18s.

Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at Public Health England, said the numbers of deaths “are so small on this graph that you can’t even see any increase”. The graph mentioned is featured above.

She said “although every death is a terrible tragedy” the data suggests the vaccination programme is working to suppress serious illness.

Dr Ramsay said the delta plus variant is under control and they are "on top of the situation", with only 41 cases of the variant currently recorded across the UK.

She also said that today’s high case figure - with 16,135 new cases recorded across the UK, the highest number since 6 February - could be attributed to surge testing in Scotland.

Read more here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/06/23/boris-johnson-travel-quarantine-lockdown-pmqs-scotland-referendum/

Subscribe to The Telegraph on YouTube ► https://bit.ly/3idrdLH

Get the latest headlines: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Telegraph.co.uk and YouTube.com/TelegraphTV are websites of The Telegraph, the UK's best-selling quality daily newspaper providing news and analysis on UK and world events, business, sport, lifestyle and culture.

#downingstreet #no10 #pressconference