Claims that UK is ‘falling behind’ with booster jabs despite record uptake

John Roberts of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries has today said that the record figures taking the third Covid ‘booster’ jab were a “positive step but that the rollout has “stalled” overall.

Around 1.7 million eligible people took the booster jab last week.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning: “We’re actually about 6 million short. So people who are currently eligible but haven’t yet had the job, and that gap has doubled in October, so we’ve gradually been falling behind,” adding: “We really need to keep on increasing the number of people that we’re getting to, and to put that in context, during November more than two million people a month will actually become newly eligible for the jab.