Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, has said he’s hoping for a ‘happy and free Great British summer’ this year as the UK’s vaccination programme continues to gather pace adding that the “vast majority” of adults would be vaccinated against Covid-19 within the next six months.

Hancock’s promises follow Public Health England’s Covid-19 strategic response director’s suggestion that the NHS will remain under huge strain until March.

Hancock said:

In six months we’ll be in the middle, I hope, of a happy and free Great British summer. I have a high degree of confidence that by then the vast majority of adults will have been vaccinated – and that’s not just the clinically vulnerable groups, but all groups.

However, despite the Health Secretary’s optimism, leading scientists have warned that social distancing may need to be enforced until the end of the year.

With one leading medical proffessional, Dr Hopkins adding:

We have learnt, as we did on the first occasion, we have to relax things really quite slowly, so that if cases start to increase we can clamp down quite fast.

The government has said that all the current measures in England will remain in place until 8 March at the earliest. A full reopening “road map” will be published towards the end of this month.

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