The former head of the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce has criticised the government for prioritizing booster vaccines for healthy young people over caring for a vast backlog of older individuals with critical conditions including cancer and diabetes.
Despite extensive evidence that the variant only causes “moderate” disease, the British government has launched an ambitious drive to provide booster vaccinations to the whole adult population by the end of January to combat the threat posed by Omicron.
This will necessitate a significant investment of NHS resources to administer a million vaccinations per day, which will undoubtedly result in seriously ill patients missing out on cancer scans and other treatments.
As previously stated, people avoiding hospitals or being unable to receive treatment due to the lockdown in the UK avoided up to 740,000 urgent cancer care referrals.
Forsided, 15.12.2021