UK Covid live: Sajid Javid makes statement to MPs on Omicron variant and booster vaccines

Javid says scientists are working quickly to discover how dangerous Omicron is. He goes on:

If it emerges that this variant is no more dangerous than the Delta variant, then we won’t keep [these] measures in place for a day longer than necessary.

That implies that, if the scientists decide Omicron poses no greater threat than Delta, compulsory mask wearing in shops and on public transport in England, and the new PCR tests for UK arrivals, could be abandoned within weeks.

This line seems to have been included more as a sop to the Tory lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group than because there is a serouis expectation that Omicron will turn out to be just like Delta.

Javid says he asked the JCBI to urgently review if it could reduce the gap between second doses and boosters.

He confirms the changes proposed by the JCVI at its own briefing earlier. (See 3.20pm and below) And he says he has accepted the recommendations in full.

He says this will be a “huge step up” for the vaccination programme. But he is confident the NHS is up to the task, he says.

More information about how this will be put into action will be announced in coming days, he says.

• JCVI is advising all adults over the age of 18 should get a booster.

• The booster programme should be rolled out by age and risk group. Boosters should be given no sooner than three months after the second dose.

• Severely immunocompromised people should get another booster, in addition to the one they have already had.

• Booster vaccines should be mRNA ones, either Moderna or Pfizer.

• Children aged 12 to 15 should now be offered a second dose of vaccine.

In the Commons Sajid Javid, the health secretary, is making a statement about Covid.

He starts by confirming the measures announced over the weekend.

And he says there will be a vote on these measures in the Commons. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, will give details later, he says.

Tomorrow, time in the Commons has been set aside for a debate on a motion chosen by the SNP. The party has announced that it is tabling a censure motion against Boris Johnson. The motion says:

That, this house censures the prime minister, the right honourable member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, for frequently violating the sixth principle of public life, for seeking to undermine the recommendations of the standards committee on Owen Paterson, for regularly ignoring independent advice on matters such as international treaties and breaches of the ministerial code by his ministers, for putting forward proposals to diminish the powers of the Electoral Commission, for ignoring independent advice concerning the granting of peerages to Conservative party donors and nominations to public bodies such as Ofcom; and further calls for his ministerial salary to be reduced by £41,567 per year.

The sixth principle of public life, as drawn up by the Nolan committee, is honesty. “Holders of public office should be truthful,” the Nolan principles say.

Q: If you are reducing the gap between second doses and booster doses from five months to three months, doesn’t that imply you are panicking?

Van-Tam says he is asking people not to panic. But he is also saying they should not ignore the weather forecast either.

Lim says, in general, the longer the gap between a first and second dose, the better. So usually it is good to extend the duration between vaccine doses.

But he also says they do not want to wait so long that they cannot precede the next wave.

He says there is data from a study showing that, after three months, you still get very strong booster response. That is why the JCVI feels it is reasonable to use that timetable.

They are now taking questions.

Q: Will you be able to deliver these boosters before Christmas?

Van-Tam says the NHS will set out in the next few days how this will be operationalised. It will be very complicated, he says.

He says the NHS understands the real urgency of this, and is up for the task.

He says they do not want younger people getting ahead of older people, who are at higher risk.

Van-Tam is onto one of his famous football analogies.

We started with 11 players, he says. With Alpha and Delta, we lost a couple of players, and had to field replacements, he says. With Omicron, it is like picking up two yellow cards. So we are at risk of going down to 10 players, he says. He says that means everyone on the pitch needs to up their game.

Here is our story on the announcement, by Jamie Grierson and Rowena Mason.

Lim says from what we know so far, the vaccines may be less good against Omicron than against the Delta variant, the one now dominant in the UK.

He says doctors can counter this by increasing the immune response from the current vaccine.

He says the immune response from the booster is higher than from the second dose.

Timing is important, he says. He says you would want to deploy boosters before a new wave. He is not saying there will be a new wave. But, in case there is one, it would be best to boost vaccines in advance.

• Lim says JCVI is advising all adults over the age of 18 should get a booster.

• The booster programme should be rolled out by age and risk group, he says. This is how the first and second doses were rolled out. He says the JCVI favours this method because the variant does not seem to be affecting age cohorts in a different way to the original virus. He says boosters should be given no sooner than three months after the second dose.

• He says severely immunocompromised people should get another booster, in addition to the one they have already had.

• He says booster vaccines should be mRNA ones, either Moderna or Pfizer.

• He says children aged 12 to 15 should now be offered a second dose of vaccine.

Raine says, even with Omicron, vaccines still have an “overwhelmingly positive benefit/risk balance”.

Van-Tam starts by saying this is a technical briefing from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.

He says we have always known variants would be inevitable. We have seen “many come”. Variants always cause concern, because we don’t know how they will behave, and how the vaccines will hold up.

We knew one would arrive that would cause “heightened concern”. And with this one, Omicron, we are there, he says.

But he says it is important to stress the degree of uncertainty. He says there is more we don’t know than we do know.

He says that will change over the next three weeks.

Omicron has many mutations. Some are ones we know a lot about, some are new.

But, on first principles, there are enough mutations to cause a worry about the effect on vaccine effectiveness.

He says Omicron is associated with an increased growth rate. But he says that is not the same as saying it is definitely more transmissible.

He says it is “not all doom and gloom” at this stage, and people should not panic.

He says if there is an impact on vaccine effectiveness, the biggest effect will be on likelihood of infection. There should be less impact on the likelihood of severe disease, he says.

The Downing Street press conference on booster vaccines is about to start. It is taking place at 9 Downing Street, where the main government press conferences take place, but it will not feature any ministers. The attendees will be Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer for England, Prof Wei Shen Lim, chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, and Dr June Raine, chief executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency

Jo Stevens, Labour MP for Cardiff Central, has confirmed she is moving from shadow culture secretary to shadow Welsh secretary in the Labour reshuffle. That will be seen as a demotion.

As shadow Welsh secretary Stevens will replace Nia Griffith, who seems to be going back to the backbenches. This is from the Times’ Patrick Maguire.

There will be a Downing Street briefing at 3pm with an update about the booster programme. It will feature Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer for England, Prof Wei Shen Lim, chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, and Dr June Raine, chief executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

There will be full coverage here, of course.

MPs should face a complete ban on working as paid consultants and ministers should be more open about any potential conflicts of interest, the Commmons standards committee. In his story, my colleague Peter Walker goes on:

Other recommendations in the report from thecommittee include an obligation for MPs to have a written contract for any outside work, available for inspection if needed, and which would spell out that they cannot lobby on behalf of the employer.

Another idea, which the committee said would need cross-party support to implement, would be to limit how much time MPs can spend on outside jobs or other interests, and how much they can earn from them. It acknowledged, however, that it was difficult to see how this might work in practice.

Peter’s full story is here.

And here you can read the full report here (pdf).

There have been three confirmed cases of the Omicron variant in England, one of which was found in Essex. On Radio 4’s the World at One Dr Mike Gogarty, Essex county council’s director of public health, said their case was linked to someone who returned from South Africa about two weeks ago.

But the case was two steps removed from the South African arrival, he said. He said: “This case contracted the case from somebody else who contracted it from one of her family who had been recently to Africa.”

He said the person with the confirmed case was tested on 20 November, but that genomic sequencing only confirmed it as Omicron at the weekend.

This timetable explains why scientists believe community transmission could already be well established.