England’s vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi has confirmed the government are looking to start reopening schools in England on March 8th, three weeks after the target for vaccinating the most vulnerable top four groups on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) priority list.
What are the Covid-19 vaccine priority groups?
The order of priority for each group in the population has been calculated using data on the number of individuals who would need to be vaccinated to prevent one death.
- Residents in a care home for older adults and their carers
- All those 80 years of age and over, and frontline health and social care workers
- All those aged 75 and over
- All those 70 years of age and over, and clinically extremely vulnerable people
- All those 65 years of age and over
- All individuals between 16 and 64 with underlying health conditions which put them at higher risk of serious disease and mortality – the ‘vulnerable’ group
- All those 60 years of age and over
- All those 55 years of age and over
- All those 50 years of age and over
It is believed the vaccine can take up to 22 days to become effective in the system, and provide immunity against Covid-19, once the first dose has been administered.
“Mid-February, if you add another three weeks to that when the vaccine protection really does begin to kick in, you’re at the first week of March,” he told Sky News
“So that’s when we will begin to first of all open schools and then begin a gradual reopening of the economy, if we continue to see good data.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson will reveal the governments roadmap out of lockdown on February 22nd first off in the House of Commons and then in an address to the nation later that day.
Boris Johnson has previously said ‘By the middle of February if things go well and with a fair wind in our sails, we expect to have offered the first vaccine dose to everyone in the four top priority groups identified by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
‘If we succeed in vaccinating all those groups, we will have removed huge numbers of people from the path of the virus and of course that will eventually enable us to lift many of the restrictions we have endured for so long.’
