There is now a desperate race between Covid and the booster vaccine

Anyone answering the prime minister’s call to “get boosted now” over the past day or so would have been met with some immediate logistical obstacles.

The NHS vaccination booking website crashed, and queues were forming at busy vaccination centres. Just to add to the general air of collapse, it became impossible to order lateral flow test kits, though there may still be some stocks with pharmacists.

It would hardly be surprising if – as with petrol and loo roll before – panic set in among the public and long lines formed outside pharmacies and vaccination sites.

The booster takes about 14 days to reach its full potency, so people are especially anxious to get protected and be testing themselves before Christmas reunions with loved ones.

It has come as a highly unwelcome surprise that even double-jab status is now next to no use against the omicron variant, which is apparently far more vaccine-evasive than was feared. The good news is that a booster will restore protection to about three-quarters; the bad news is the rush to get vaccinated.

As ever, the older, poorer citizens, those with chaotic lives and those who are clinically vulnerable and unable to venture out so readily will tend to get left behind. By the end of the week, omicron will be the dominant variant, hence the ambitious target of a million jabs a day.

Not for the first time, then, there is a race between Covid and the vaccine, this time in booster form. Not for the first time either, misjudgements have given the virus a head start.

Even without hindsight, it was plain at the time that the exit from lockdown in the summer was rushed. Retaining modest social interventions, such as mask-wearing, and implementing plan B earlier could have pushed delta infection rates lower and helped the NHS make more inroads in its backlog of non-urgent cases, creating capacity for a high winter surge.

Caution was not applied, however, and omicron arrived instead. Much now depends on how the health secretary rises to this occasion. He has placed himself in personal charge of the booster programme, after the reshuffle in which the highly effective minister for vaccine deployment, Nadhim Zahawi, was sent to sort out the schools.

Mr Zahawi’s formal successor, Maggie Throup, doesn’t carry the same authority and does not attend cabinet, so it is all on “the Saj”, and things haven’t got off to the best of starts.

If the NHS and the armed forces don’t manage to save the government from abject and predictable failure, the usual search for a scapegoat will soon follow – adding momentum to the campaign to dethrone Mr Johnson from the Conservative party leadership.

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Whether it is Mr Johnson or Mr Javid who gets the blame will determine much about the future path of the government, but it won’t change the fact that yet another grievous disaster is all but upon us.

Perhaps sheer fear of political oblivion will drive Mr Johnson and Mr Javid to make things a success. After almost two years of pandemic response and one of the worst death rates in Europe, spin and excuses won’t do this time round.

Mr Johnson, with his talent for ringing (but empty) phrasemaking, calls this “a national mission unlike anything we have done before in the vaccination programme”. He is right about that – but right now it feels very much like mission impossible.