Covid news: Boris Johnson urges UK to keep Christmas celebrations small as death toll passes 65,000

Lionel Blair said it meant a "great deal" to have been given the Covid-19 jab - as he dubbed those who turn it down "crazy".

The Name That Tune presenter, 92, received the first of two vaccine injections at an NHS vaccine centre, set up in the grounds of the horse racing course at Epsom, Surrey.

"I couldn't believe it when they called me and said, 'It's next week and then the next one is in January' and here I am," he said.

"I'm just ... thinking, thank God I live here."

The entertainer added: "I'm hoping it's going to make me live a bit longer! And seeing my grandchildren and children growing up.

"The whole thing means a great deal to me."

Boris Johnson and England's chief medical officer professor Chris Whitty are giving a Downing Street press conference now.

Boris Johnson has appealed to Britons to keep festive celebrations small-scale and brief, saying: “Have yourself a merry little Christmas, and I’m afraid this year I do mean little”.

Political editor Andrew Woodcock reports:

Boris Johnson also said people should avoid crowds.

The prime minister said: "And whatever your plans for Christmas, please think carefully about avoiding crowds in the Boxing Day sales.

"And no one should be gathering in large groups to see in the New Year."

He added: "If you have an elderly relative you might want to delay seeing them until they have been vaccinated."

Responding to a questions from a member of the public about allowing mixing at Christmas, Mr Johnson said the government had to make a "judgment" about "how people are going to behave anyway" and their "natural instinct to want to see their families".

He added: "What we're trying to do is to set the parameters that we think are sensible and we've come up with a maximum that we think is sensible across the whole of the UK.

"Everybody should exercise personal responsibility, judging yourselves how best to reduce the contact, the meeting of other people that is the way of spreading this disease."

Professor Chris Whitty said the virus had forced authorities to make "really hard choices" between "two bad options".

This involved balancing the "natural wish" of people wanting to get together at Christmas, which was important for mental health, alongside the risk posed by people gathering in groups.

He added: "We're forced into this incredibly difficult choice where both the options are bad options and the aim is to try to find some middle way between the difficult options we have to have."

Prof Whitty said the modelling shows that relaxing the rules will lead to an increase in deaths.

He said: "Any kind of period where people come together in groups that otherwise wouldn't meet leads to an increase in risks and that will lead to an increase in hospitalisations and deaths.

"That's been consistently what we've said will happen, not just scientists but political leaders, but what we've tried to do is to then find out what are the things you can do to reduce the risk.

"Reducing this number of households who meet up together to the lowest you can manage in this period, shortening the period of time, because shortening the period of time also has an important effect, and reducing the movement of people from high transmission areas to low transmission areas, all of these, modelling and other forms of science, all make clear will reduce the risk significantly further than if we didn't do those."

Prof  Whitty made a comparison with driving at 70mph on an icy road and acknowledged if every household takes it to the limit during Christmas there would be a "significant problem".

He said: "This is the equivalent of us saying these are icy and treacherous conditions, if you wish to have a driving analogy, we should be doing the minimum necessary still within the law.

"Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

"Obviously if everybody pushes it right to the limit in every single household that would be a significant problem but I think it is very unlikely that will happen."

He said most people are taking these decisions to manage the risk "incredibly seriously".

"I do not think everybody is going to take it to the limit, I think people are being as always, as they have all the way through this, are going to be incredibly responsible about it in the great majority of cases," he added.

Joyce Dowd is 94 years old and has recently become a great great grandmother. She received the vaccination in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, at a new GP-run centre.

Now that she has been vaccinated, Ms Dowd intends to visit her great-great grandchild, born during the pandemic, for the first time.

Her fourth great-great grandchild is expected in February but Ms Dowd has said that she will only visit the children when she is sure that it is safe to do so.

Read more:

People from ethnic minority backgrounds or with lower incomes are less likely to take the coronavirus vaccine being rolled out in Britain, research suggested Wednesday, raising concerns about whether the jab would reach the communities that have been hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic.

A survey by Britain's Royal Society for Public Health said that while three-quarters of those polled would take a COVID-19 vaccine if advised to do so by a doctor, that figure fell to 57% among Black people and those from Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds.

The body also said the survey "revealed significantly more hesitancy among lower income groups" — with 70% of lowest earners likely to agree to the jab, compared to 84% of highest earners.

Public health experts and doctors say the findings are concerning, but unsurprising. They align with consistently lower uptake rates of other vaccines, like the measles and flu jabs, among ethnic minority communities and in poorer neighborhoods, they say.

That reluctance — a result of factors like public health messaging not reaching the communities and mistrust of authority based on past experiences — has been exacerbated by misinformation and anti-vaccination campaigns on social media.

AP