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 With nearly a quarter of the United Kingdom's population now
inoculated with a first dose of a COVID vaccine in a little over two
months, Johnson is under pressure from some lawmakers and businesses
to reopen the shuttered economy.
"We've got to watch the data," Health Secretary Matt Hancock told
Sky News. "Everybody wants to get out of this as quickly as we
safely can, and both as quickly, but also as safely, are important.
"The question is a judgment of how quickly and safely, how quickly
we can do that safely. That's the judgment that we're making this
week, looking at the data, ahead of the prime minister setting out
the roadmap, on the 22nd," he said.
The biggest and swiftest global vaccine rollout in history is seen
as the best chance of exiting the COVID-19 pandemic which has killed
2.4 million people, tipped the global economy into its worst
peacetime slump since the Great Depression and upended normal life
for billions.
Britain has vaccinated 15.062 million people with a first dose and
537,715 with a second dose, the fastest rollout per capita of any
large country. Hancock said he expected vaccine supplies to increase
as manufacturing accelerated.
VACCINE CERTIFICATES
Hancock said the British government was speaking to other countries
across the world about giving British people certificates showing
they had been vaccinated so that they could travel abroad in the
future to countries that require them.
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 "There is this international
work going on because if other countries require
(proof of vaccination) we want to allow Brits to
be able to travel to those countries," Hancock
said. "We'd want to be able to
facilitate that sort of vaccine certification, but it isn't anything
we're planning to introduce here," he said, adding that a so-called
vaccine passport was not something that would be required to access
services in the UK.
The United Kingdom has the world's fifth-worst official death toll -
currently 117,166 - after the United States, Brazil, Mexico and
India.
A new COVID-19 hotel quarantine system for arrivals from 33 "red
list" countries, intended to limit the spread of new variants of the
virus, appeared to be working smoothly a few hours after it was
introduced, Hancock said.
 "As of 6.30, when I got my latest update, this is working smoothly.
We've been working with the airports and with the border force to
make sure everybody knows the process," Hancock told Times Radio.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton; Editing by James
Davey, Peter Graff and Nick Macfie)
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