Asked about the criteria for an area to exit Tier 3, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The first thing that’s most important is that the case rate has to be coming down, and in particular we look at the number of cases amongst the over-60s because that’s the number that is likely to translate into hospital admissions and sadly into deaths.”
He added: “Unfortunately it’s (NHS data) showing that hospitalisations are still going up and that they are again doubling every fortnight or so … There’s just under 100,000 beds in the NHS as a whole and you can see how many of those are taken up by people with Covid.”
– Matt Hancock asked about vaccine
Asked how soon NHS staff could be injected with a vaccine, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Well, we’re not there yet. The vaccine programme is progressing well. The leading candidates we’re in very close contact with.
“On my central expectation, I would expect the bulk of the roll-out to be in the first half of next year.”
Asked if there could be some this year, he said: “Well, I don’t rule that out, but that is not my central expectation.”
