10M JABS IN LONDON ... ANOTHER 4M TO GO

JAVID URGES MORE TO GET VACCINE WITH CAPITAL STILL LAGGING BEHIND REST OF UK

TEN million coronavirus jabs have been given to Londoners, with health chiefs today hailing it as a “brilliant achievement”.

Official figures from NHS England will confirm that the number of first and second doses broke through the landmark number last night.

But the capital, which lags behind the rest of the country, was urged to maintain efforts to get all seven million adults double-vaccinated to ensure maximum protection against a feared fourth wave of Covid-19 in the autumn.

More than 1.3 million Londoners remain unvaccinated and almost four million more jabs still have to be given to get the city’s adult population fully inoculated. It came as Imperial College London experts today highlighted the benefits of vaccination, with their latest study finding that double-jabbed people were up to 60 per cent less likely to contract Covid.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid told the Standard: “We have hit 10 million Covid-19 vaccines administered in the capital — a brilliant achievement.

“Uptake rates in London remain slightly lower than the rest of the country and I urge everybody to come forward as soon as possible for their first and second jabs as we pass this important milestone. Getting both doses of the vaccine is the most important thing you can do to help build a wall of defence around our capital and our country as we learn to live safely with this virus.”

Mayor Sadiq Khan said: “I’m incredibly proud that more than 10 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been given to Londoners. Every day

we are seeing the huge difference that this vaccine is making in our fight against the virus, as it helps to prevent infections and save lives.

“But as our city opens up, it’s vital that our pace does not slow. We’re working closely with the NHS to make it as accessible as possible and I urge all Londoners who haven’t yet had the vaccine, or need to get their second dose, to book their appointment or attend one of the many walk-in vaccination clinics as soon as possible.” In other developments today:

⬤ Government minister Michelle Donelan said advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) on whether to offer the jab to 16 and 17-year-olds was due imminently. Professor Steven Riley, of Imperial College, said such a move would have a “really good knock-on effect” on reducing Covid transmission.

⬤ The Government was expected to scrap France’s “amber plus” listing for foreign travel, meaning double-jabbed people returning to England would not have to quarantine.

⬤ Hopes were also rising that Spain would not be put on the “red list”, with

Please do not delay — if you haven’t received your jab yet, do the right thing and book it as soon as possible Health Secretary Sajid Javid

several other EU countries possibly moving from “amber” to “green”.

The Office for National Statistics estimated that almost 94 per cent of Londoners had Covid antibodies in the week ending July 18. By the end of Monday, a total of 9,987,319 jabs had been given to Londoners — meaning only 12,681 more were needed to hit 10 million.

Health sources said the 10 million figure was reached earlier than expected this week after a “data backlog” was cleared, increasing the total by almost 123,000 on Monday — about four times the average daily rate.

Across London, more than 80.6 per cent of the 6,954,983 population aged 18 or older has had one jab and 63 per

cent have had both jabs. But analysis of the NHS figures shows wide disparity between boroughs, with three — Richmond, Ealing and Hounslow — having given first jabs to more than 90 per cent of residents.

By comparison, only 63.9 per cent of Westminster residents, and 66.5 per cent of Camden residents, have had a first jab. This is partly believed to be because some wealthy residents will have left London for second homes.

On second jabs, Richmond has the highest figure of 79.1 per cent. Harrow, Bromley, Merton and Hounslow are also above 70 per cent. But boroughs such as Tower Hamlets (50.5 per cent), Camden (51.2 per cent) and Hackney (53.3 per cent) have barely double-vaccinated half their residents. Mr Javid said jabs would enable people to go on foreign holidays, and emphasised that proof of vaccination would be required for large music events and nightclubs from September.

“Please do not delay — if you haven’t received your jab yet, do the right thing and book it as soon as possible,” he said.

Sir David Sloman, regional director of the NHS in London, said: “It is fantastic that 10 million Covid vaccinations have been given to Londoners. I thank the many dedicated NHS staff, partners and volunteers who have helped us to reach this tremendous milestone.”

Today’s React 1 study by Imperial College found that fully-vaccinated people were three times less likely than unvaccinated people to test positive. Across England, there are about 2.8 million 18-29-year olds who are not vaccinated.

Dr Tom Wingfield, of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said the React study showed that the recent rise in cases had been driven by the Delta variant and infections in young, unvaccinated people. He said: “Even with extremely high vaccine coverage, we are highly likely to have a further wave of SARS-CoV infections in the autumn. By September… schools and universities will be returning and there will be an inevitable increase in social mixing.”

ONE afternoon in September 2019, an excited Boris Johnson ushered his most senior aides into his No10 study. He had just pulled off his first diplomatic coup since taking over as Prime Minister.

The United Nations had announced that Blighty had won the bid to host the 26th Conference of the Parties on climate change (COP26) in Glasgow.

Johnson, one aide who was present tells me, was fizzing with Johnsonian ambition. No longer would Glasgow simply be known as Scotland’s biggest city. It would enter humanity’s lexicon as the site where the world parked its differences and came together to avert its own destruction.

Where people say Paris and Kyoto, now they will also say Glasgow, the PM decreed. But it isn’t working out like that. COP26 opens on October 31 and is already in deep trouble. That in turn spells trouble for Johnson. There are four reasons. First, there is still no international consensus on what should be agreed in Glasgow. That agreement was supposed to be the last act of three. If Kyoto in 1997 was about agreeing there is a problem, and Paris in 2015 was about setting a target to tackle it (limiting the Earth’s temperature rise to 1.5C), Glasgow was to be about working out how to do that. The tricky bit, in other words.

Yet from deciding the date on which to close all coal-fired power stations to determining when petrol and diesel vehicles must be replaced, every attempt this year to pin something down has failed. The G7 summit in June, also hosted by Johnson, did not change matters. World leaders’ eyes are elsewhere as they battle their own Covid pandemics and spiralling deficits.

The second reason COP26 is in deep water is that a realisation is dawning that those global policies to halt climate change that have been agreed so far are going to fail. Tree planting to decarbonise the atmosphere is one. Oxfam GB’s boss Danny Sriskandarajah told me this week that for the world to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, forests would need to be planted “five times the size of India”. “It’s just not realistic”, he said.

Third, Johnson is still unable to show a strong enough lead on these matters in Britain for the rest of the world to follow. His heat and buildings strategy to replace 25 million gas boilers, his hydrogen strategy and the plan to build an electric car-charging network are all many months late.

As the delay goes on, more unconvinced Tory MPs whip themselves into a lather about how much this will all cost consumers .

Fourth, most frighteningly of all, things are about to get even worse. On Monday, the world’s climate change scientists publish their first update in seven years on exactly how warm the Earth has already become, and all the omens are grim. Potentially very grim. The world is very likely to be a lot hotter than had previously been feared. Some predict the 1.5C limit is already out of reach 29 years early, and climate change irreversible. Time to panic? It could be.

I understand an intense debate is now raging within No10 on what to do about all this, and how high a bar should the PM set for COP26. There are two camps. Both admit sights have been lowered considerably since the heady days of September 2019.

COP26 President Alok Sharma’s camp want to say as little as possible before the summit in the hope of building a late consensus and declaring whatever can be agreed in Glasgow a success. A declaration to “keep 1.5 alive” might be enough, they say. The more pugnacious camp, led by No10’s big beast advisers, the camp that Johnson currently sides with, insist that’s not enough. Glasgow won’t solve everything, they argue, but it could still be a crucial stepping stone to another COP in five years that might.

To get there, the PM needs to start shouting and heap some very public pressure on the big emitters in the slow lane. Five years ago, a COP26 that fails would have been an environmental disaster but not a political one. But times have changed, and so has the weather. The summer of 2021 was the moment climate change exploded right across the public consciousness.

The extreme weather it causes has sparked wild fires in Turkish tourist resorts, washed away roads in Germany and flooded basements in west London. Voters in Britain, as well as the world, now expect. Johnson has less than three months left to save it.

⬤ Tom Newton Dunn is a presenter and chief political commentator on Times Radio

Five years ago, a failed COP26 might have been an environmental disaster. Now it’d be a political one too