Matt Hancock says life could return to normal ‘after Easter’

Speaking on the latest vaccine news, Matt Hancock said things should return to some sense of normality after Easter.

He told BBC Breakfast that the majority of people will be vaccinated in spring, meaning things should return to normal after Easter.

It comes after the Oxford vaccine candidate has been demonstrated to be 90% effective, with health secretary Matt Hancock stressing that the majority of the population would need to be immunised before restrictions can be significantly eased.

The government has pre-ordered 100 million doses of the Oxford vaccine which is reportedly cheaper and easier to store than the Pfizer and Moderna alternative.

The Oxford vaccine has proved to be between 70 and 90% effective based on a trial of 20,000 people.

Hancock explained that the ‘bulk’ of the vaccines will be given in the new year with some getting the vaccine before Christmas.

He said: “It is subject to that regulatory approval and I really stress that because the medicines regulator, it’s called the MHRA, is independent, they’re rigorous, they’re one of the best regulators in the world.

“They will be very, very careful to ensure that they look at all the data to make sure that this is safe. Subject to that approval, we hope to be able to start vaccinating next month.

“The bulk of the vaccine rollout programme will be in January, February, March, and we hope that sometime after Easter things will be able to start to get back to normal.”

The news comes following the expected announcement later today with the government’s plans for winter.

It is expected a tiered system, stricter than the previous one will be put in place post-Lockdown 2.0 to allow families to celebrate Christmas.

Mr Hancock said: “The number of cases is now clearly starting to fall across the whole of the UK.

“In England, we come to the end of the lockdown as you know on December 2nd, and so we do think that we can replace the lockdown with a tiered system. But the tiered system, whilst lighter than lockdown, will have to be stronger than the previous tiers that were in place.”

When asked if there will be a fourth tier, Mr Hancock said: “No, three tiers, but the top tier, tier 3, will have to be stronger than the previous tier 3.”

The new local tiered rules are expected to be accompanied by more mass testing programmes similar to that in Liverpool.

Mr Hancock said cases in Liverpool – the worst affected city in the UK – have been brought down ‘really quite remarkably’ following the rollout.

He said: “In Liverpool, cases are down by more than two-thirds in the last few weeks.

“And this is a combination, of course, of those restrictions that have been in place, but also in Liverpool we put in mass testing.

“They’ve tested over 200,000 people of the just over half a million who live in Liverpool. And they’ve found a load more people who were asymptomatic, didn’t know that they had a problem, didn’t know they have the virus.

“And the combination of the mass testing, and the measures in Liverpool, have brought the cases down really quite remarkably, much faster than I would have thought was possible.”