Vaccine caution as national rollout begins – The Yorkshire Post says

Though the difference is subtle, the sense of relief was discernible after the UK became the first country in the world to authorise a gamechanging jab developed by Pfizer and BioNTech as Ministers finalise plans to inoculate the most vulnerable from as early as next week.

This was self-evident as news programmes were interrupted to confirm the development and people were genuinely taken aback by news alerts on their mobile devices – there is now a growing flicker of light at the end of the long and dark proverbial tunnel.

But it also needs to be tempered by the fact that it will be many months before it is possible to vaccinate most of the country from Covid – and that this also means serious economic and social restrictions staying in place for the foreseeable future.

This explains why Boris Johnson’s caution at Prime Minister’s Questions – he now knows that the roll out of this vaccine represent that a supreme challenge that needs to be handled with far more clarity than his approach to testing where he over-promised and under-delivered.

Total transparency is required from the outset – the Government’s priority list starting with older residents of care homes is a start – and Ministers utilising the expertise of local authorities, and the military, to reassure all those who have become prisoners to Covid and to maximise public take-up rates.

Now, more than ever, details matter – the vaccine, for example, has to be stored at minus 70 degrees – and Mr Johnson needs to focus on them, rather than the politics, if this next phase of the fight against Covid is to become the definitive end game.

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