Sheffield New LIVE: Covid jabs set to be mandatory for NHS and care home staff

He said: “What we’ve been waiting for over the last month with the Delta variant is to find out whether with two doses of the vaccine we have good protection against hospitalisation.

“And the data that came out on Monday from Public Health England that show over 90% protection against hospitalisation is incredibly reassuring in that regard.

“That’s the key bit that we have to look at with future variants, if that very high protection against hospitalisation continues, despite spread in the community, then the public health crisis is over.

“And so far, up to Delta, we’re in a very good position, as long as we’ve got people vaccinated.”

But he added: “Of course the World Health Organisation (WHO), with its variants under investigation, we are up to Kappa, there are a lot more Greek alphabet letters still to go through.

“And hopefully, we’ll still be in a good position when we get to Omega, but we have to keep monitoring it, we don’t know yet, we’ve only got up to Delta.”

He told the Science and Technology Committee: “We’re talking about variants and they’re emergence – this will happen, is going to continue to happen.

“But in the end, we’re going to have to come back to focusing on the really important public health issue, which is the hospitalisation and the death.

“And if those are disconnected – if transmission is disconnected by vaccine immunity from the severe disease to a large extent – then we’ll need to monitor new variants perhaps if we need to find new vaccines and so on, but we are going to have to live with it being in in our communities and transmitting.”

He told the NHS Confederation annual conference that the NHS would “finish the job” of the Covid-19 vaccination programme to the “greatest extent possible” over the next four weeks.

Sir Simon said: “It is now very important that we use the next four weeks to finish the job to the greatest extent possible for the Covid vaccination programme, which has been a historic signature achievement in terms of the effectiveness of delivering by the NHS – over 60 million doses now administered.

“By July 19 we aim to have offered perhaps two thirds of adults across the country double jabs.

“And we’re making great strides also in extending the offer to all adults – today people aged 23 and 24 are able to vaccinate through the National Booking Service.

“I expect that by the end of this week, we’ll be able to open up the National Booking Service to all adults age 18 and above.

“Of course, vaccine supply continues to be constrained, so we’re pacing ourselves at precisely the rate of which we’re getting that extra vaccine supply between now and July 19.”

He told the NHS Confederation conference: “We expect that we will begin to see further therapies that will actually treat coronavirus and prevent severe illness and death.

“Today I’m asking the health service to gear up for what are likely to be a new category of such treatments – so-called neutralising monoclonal antibodies – which are potentially going to become available to us within the next several months.

“But in order to be able to administer them, we’re going to need community services that are able to deliver through regional networks this type of infusion in patients before they are hospitalised – typically within a three-day window from the date of infection.

“So the logistics and the organisation and applying the full excellence of the sort of networked NHS services locally through integrated care systems, we’re going to need to harness all of that, to be able to benefit from the new monoclonal antibodies.

“We are setting out a set of asks as to how to bring that about in each integrated care system so that as and when the treatments become available to us, they can immediately begin to be deployed.”

New analysis by PHE shows for the first time that 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective against hospitalisation from the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant.

The analysis suggests:

These are comparable with vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation from the Alpha variant.

Further work remains underway to establish the level of protection against mortality from the Delta variant. However, as with other variants, this is expected to be high.

The analysis included 14,019 cases of the Delta variant – 166 of whom were hospitalised – between 12 April and 4 June, looking at emergency hospital admissions in England.

Public Health England (PHE) has previously published analysis showing that one dose is 17% less effective at preventing symptomatic illness from the Delta variant, compared to Alpha, but there is only a small difference after 2 doses.

Health and Social Care Secretary, Matt Hancock said:

Our UK vaccination programme continues at pace and has already saved thousands of lives. It is our way out of this pandemic.

This evidence of the effectiveness of two doses against variants shows just how crucial it is to get your second jab.

If you have had your first dose but haven’t booked your second yet – please do so. It will help save lives and boost us on the road to recovery.

“And we know, at least from the clinical trials, (there was) protection for the first six months after people have had two doses.

“But we don’t know yet whether boosters will be needed or not.

“And of course at the moment we’ve got a lot of work to do to make sure the second doses are into as many of those people over 50 – who are the greatest risk of hospitalisation – to try and minimise that.

“And you know we’re not that far from September.

“We also have a virus that’s circulating which will cause some mild disease in those who’ve had two doses, and that will actually boost their immunity as well.

“So we’re actually in quite a good place at the moment, we’re not seeing any failure over time, waning of that protection.

“But it is something that needs to be looked at over time but I don’t think we have the evidence to predict the dates.”