London, Oct 22 (Agency) The UK government will maintain the six-month time period between the second doses of the Covid-19 vaccine and the booster injection unless advised otherwise by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), the minister of state for care, Gillian Keegan, said on Friday, following reports that the gap will be cut to five months. “At the moment it is six months, that is what we have been told and that plan is in place and has been in place for about five weeks now,” Keegan told Sky News broadcaster.
The Care secretary said, however, that the JCVI is “continually looking at the data” and the government will do “whatever they say.” In September, the government began to offer a third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to people aged over 50, care home and frontline health workers and people with health conditions. The six-month wait had initially been implemented because it was deemed to be the right time to restore waning immunity.
The Daily Telegraph reported that the interval might be reduced to five months to speed up the rollout in winter, amid growing concern over the recent increase in coronavirus positive cases that saw the United Kingdom reporting on Thursday over 50,000 new infections for the first time since July.