Treat Covid like flu, end mass vaccination after boosters: UK vaccine expert

The British government should end mass vaccination against coronavirus disease (Covid-19) after the booster dose campaign, a former chairman of the UK’s vaccine task force has suggested.

Dr Clive Dix called for a new targeted strategy to manage Covid-19 and scrap population-based jabs as the UK witnesses fall in daily Covid-19 cases after registering record numbers, according to several British media reports.

“We need to analyse whether we use the current booster campaign to ensure the vulnerable are protected, if this is seen to be necessary,” The Observer quoted Dix as saying. “Mass population-based vaccination in the UK should now end.”

The vaccine expert insisted that the government needs to manage the disease and not the spread of coronavirus, adding that the future objective should be “stopping progression to severe disease in vulnerable groups.”

Dix’s statement came after the UK health security agency (UKHSA) reported nearly 147,000 new confirmed Covid cases over the last 24 hours on Saturday. With an 18.5% decline in daily infections from the previous week’s figure of 179,637, the UK marked the biggest week-on-week fall since the start of November. But the death toll due to Covid-19 continued to increase with 313 more fatalities recorded, taking the cumulative death toll of Britain over 150,000.

“Coronavirus has taken a terrible toll on our country and today the number of deaths recorded has reached 150,000,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote on Twitter.

“Each and every one of those is a profound loss to the families, friends and communities affected and my thoughts and condolences are with them. Our way out of this pandemic is for everyone to get their booster or their first or second dose if they haven’t yet,” he added.