LONDON’S FIGHT TO HIT 100,000 JABS A DAY

3.6M DOSES NEEDED TO ENSURE JULY 19 TARGET

LONDON faces a “game-changer” challenge to deliver 100,000 Covid jabs every day until July 19 to hit Boris Johnson’s target for reopening the country, the Standard can reveal. A total of 3.62 million more doses are needed in the arms of Londoners to ensure everyone over 18 has been offered the vaccine and two-thirds are “double jabbed”.

Winning the race against time means doubling recent rates of injections. A total of 51,892 first and second doses were

given in the capital on Monday. Top football clubs in London will pile in behind the marathon roll-out this weekend, with Chelsea, Spurs, West Ham and Charlton all hosting walk-in clinics.

However, there were fears that London may not get enough of the Pfizer and Moderna doses needed to stem the spread of the worrying Delta variant.

One local authority source said supplies of AstraZeneca jabs were plentiful but these are no longer recommended for under-40s.

In a the scramble for jabs, Kensington & Chelsea borough’s lead council on health, Cem Kemahli, protested on Twitter that a “Vaccine Bus” deployed for three months to tackle hesitancy was “sent only 27 jabs for a day’s vaccine bus — so forced to turn people away”.

Mayor Sadiq Khan today said he was confident London can deliver 100,000 jabs a day and told the Standard: “I think we can [do it].”

He said “really exciting” mass vaccination events this weekend were vital as they would offer jabs to young Londoners who may not have received a jab invitation by text message if they were not registered with a GP.

“I think the reality is the jabs are the game changer in helping to fight the virus and helping you go about your life,” he said.

A senior Whitehall official told the Standard that supplies of the Pfizer vaccine were slowing down as more nations competed for doses, but denied there was any shortage.

International Trade Secretary Liz Truss told Sky News: “It simply is not true that there’s a supply problem.”

One London GP running a large vaccination centre told the Standard that delivering 100,000 jabs a day was feasible — as long as NHS bureaucrats did not get in the way and supplies of the Pfizer vaccine held up.

He told the Standard that the stadium walk-in clinics turned vaccination into a “social media” event, with young Londoners sharing images.

“These mass sites work really well because people don’t have to book in advance,” the GP said.

A further 813 cases of Covid were diagnosed in London yesterday, taking the total over the most recent seven days to 5,942 — up 52 per cent on the previous week.

The case rate in Londoners under 60 is six times higher than in those over 60 — indicating how the vaccine rollout is protecting the capital’s elderly.

People aged 23 and 24 were able to start booking appointments yesterday, which will be extended to everyone over 18 by the end of the week.

The GP said a vaccinator working efficiently should be able to deliver a jab every 2.5 minutes — 25 an hour.

His centre expects to receive 1,500 Pfizer jabs next week but has a cohort of 10,000 residents aged 20-24.

The Olympic stadium, now known as West Ham’s London stadium, is offering first Pfizer jabs to 10,000 people aged 18 or older living in Barking and Dagenham, Hackney, Havering, Newham, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, and the City of London.

Newham mayor Rokhsana Fiaz urged residents to take advantage of the Olympics clinic — for which appointments can be booked online.