Please see below checked against delivery version of
the PM’s opening speech at today’s press conference.
"Good afternoon everybody,
I want to set out our plan for managing Covid this autumn and
winter
And I want you to cast your mind back exactly a year and think
where we were last September
as schools went back and the colder months approached.
Because in one way our position today is actually more
challenging.
We have higher levels of daily cases – thousands more.
But in many other crucial respects
the British people – all of us collectively and individually –
are incomparably better placed to fight the disease.
We have more than 80 per cent of all over-16s now double jabbed,
double vaccinated.
And we have Covid antibodies in around 90 per cent of the adult
population.
And those vaccines are working.
We have seen the extraordinary vaccine-induced falls in deaths
and serious disease.
And depending on your age, you’re up to 9 times more likely to
die, sadly, if you’re unvaccinated, than if you’ve had both jabs.
And the result of this vaccination campaign is that we have one
of the most free societies and one of the most open economies in
Europe.
And that’s why we are now sticking with our strategy.
In essence we’re going to keep going.
We will continue to offer testing.
We will continue to urge everyone to be sensible, to be
responsible
wash your hands, use ventilation,
consider wearing a face covering in crowded places with people
that you don’t know
stay at home if you feel unwell,
download and use the app.
And we’re investing massively in our NHS to meet the pressures of
Covid with an additional £5.4 billion in England over the next
six months,
- and that’s on top of almost £36 billion over the next three
years to help our NHS recover and fix the long-standing problems
of social care as well, as I was saying last week.
And we are helping to vaccinate the world with 100 million doses
for
developing countries by next June,
and I think this country should be proud, continue to be very
proud, that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine remains the workhorse
of global immunisation.
And we will keep further measures in reserve – a Plan B.
We do not see the need now to proceed for instance with mandatory
certification
But we will continue to work with the many businesses that are
getting ready for such a scheme
- indeed over 200 events have already used Covid certification
voluntarily.
And it is just not sensible to rule out completely this kind of
option now
when we must face the fact that it might still make the
difference between keeping businesses open at full capacity or
not.
We will also keep open the option of mandating face coverings as
they have elsewhere
or advising people again to work from home
reflecting the fact that when you’ve got a large proportion of
the country as we have now with immunity, then smaller changes
can make a bigger difference and give us the confidence that we
don’t need to go back to the lockdowns of the past.
And of course we will continue to update our advice to you based
on the latest data.
But in the meantime we are confident in the vaccines that have
made such a difference to our lives
And we are now intensifying that effort
offering jabs to 12 to 15 year olds on the advice of the Chief
Medical Officers
who’ve given that advice based on the health, wellbeing and
educational prospects of the children themselves.
And for over 50s – and the under 50s who are at risk, or more at
risk –
We’re now motoring ahead with the booster programme
a third dose six months after your second dose
so that’s going to mean we’re going to be building even higher
walls of immunisation of vaccine protection in this country.
And the UK government has procured at scale jabs for every part
of the UK
and we will be sending doses to the Devolved Administrations in
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Covid is still out there.
The disease sadly still remains a risk.
But I’m confident we can keep going with our plan to turn jabs
jabs jabs into jobs jobs jobs
and protect the gains that we have made together."
