Ministers facing calls to release daily Covid vaccine updates

Ministers are facing calls to release daily vaccination figures and breakdowns of how many jabs have been given to the most vulnerable after vowing to inoculate everyone in the UK's top four "priority" groups by mid-February.

The pledge, which has been met with scepticism from experts and politicians, covers around 13 million vulnerable people in Britain – including care home residents and staff, frontline health workers and all over-70s.

Prime minister Boris Johnson said that the success of the rollout would determine when and how the latest lockdown restrictions are eased. No 10 has just under six weeks to meet its target, meaning health authorities will need to vaccinate roughly two million people every week.

Labour said it was vital that the government acts transparently in publishing rolling updates and detail on which individuals have been vaccinated, having previously been accused of fudging its daily testing figures.

“Vaccination is the light at the end of this horrendous dark tunnel,” shadow health minister Jonathan Ashworth told The Independent.

“Everyone wants to see significant progress made, starting with two million jabs a week as soon as possible. It’s crucial ministers are fully transparent and we urge them to publish daily data on vaccination figures."

Charities representing some of the UK’s most vulnerable groups have reiterated this message.

“We need to know on a daily basis how many vaccinations have actually been administered,” Nadra Ahmed, chair of the National Care Association, told The Independent. “We do need the clarity.

“If they've got a target of 2 million a week – divide that by seven – we want to see that we're getting the rights numbers on a daily basis. I think that's imperative because otherwise we'll know we're missing the target.

“Certainly in our sector, we want to know that the priority is being given to care homes of all sizes. There is no reason the smaller ones should be excluded.”

Daily updates showing that people were being vaccinated en masse would help to lift public spirits, Ms Ahmed added. “If the government wants to rebuild the trust of the nation and make this lockdown count, then they need to carry through the rollout, hit their targets and show they're on track.”

The Department of Health and Social Care has previously come under pressure to meet tight deadlines in ramping up the UK’s testing programme. Last year ministers were accused of “massaging” figures to make it appear that the government had met its target of testing 100,000 people a day before the end of April.

Currently, the DHSC releases weekly figures on how many people throughout the four nations have received the vaccine.

Carers UK, which represents unpaid care workers, another vulnerable group in the UK’s priority list, said a daily vaccination update would foster “a huge sense of hope for the future, especially during this difficult third lockdown when many will be shielding again alongside the person they care for”.

“As well as providing transparency about the government’s progress, a daily update would reassure carers that their loved ones in the older and clinically vulnerable categories, as well as the health and care workers they might normally interact with are, day by day, being protected,” Helen Walker, chief executive of Carers UK, told The Independent.

The Liberal Democrats have meanwhile joined Labour in demanding greater transparency from the government as it pushes ahead with its nationwide vaccination programme. 

Munira Wilson, MP for Twickenham and the health and social care spokesperson for the Lib Dems, told The Independent: "Everyone will want to keep a close eye on how the rollout is going - it's key to public confidence and trust, as well as holding the PM to account on his promise.  

"That's why we need a daily dashboard published and updates shared at the press conferences to show how many people in each group have had the jab to date.

“This information needs to be shared at a local level too so that communities up and down the country can see how many of their most vulnerable citizens have now been protected.”

Although most have acknowledged the provision of such data would help to bring more clarity to the government’s operations, some have warned that these figures cannot be taken as confirmation that the pandemic is drawing to a close.

The publication of daily updates “must be linked to a comprehensive strategy to drive down infections and keep them down,” Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told The Independent.

“If this just becomes another counting exercise it will be of limited value. In particular, is the government planning to release restrictions once the four vulnerable groups have been vaccinated, leaving the rest of the population at risk of Long Covid? We need to know.”

Early signs from the nationwide rollout raise questions over whether Downing Street will be able sufficiently expand the programme and meet its mid-February too.

In the month that followed the approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, 944,539 people received a dose, according to the latest government data - the equivalent of roughly 47,000 vaccinations a day. 

This figure needs to rise to 290,000 if the government is to stand a chance of providing protection to 13 million vulnerable Britons between now and 15 February.

And after the government initially pledged to have 30 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine ready to go for rollout, only 530,000 doses have so far been made available.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer warned that No 10 was once again at risk of “over-promising and under-delivering”, arguing that there was “no room for error” in attempts to scale up the rollout.

“This is a race against time and we all hope that in that seven-week period this can happen,” he told the BBC on Tuesday. “There's no room for error from the government here.”