Jab booking chaos saw 4.4MILLION try to book a slot but just 545,000 get one

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Britain’s booster drive was mired in chaos after more than 4.4million attempts were made to book booster shots on the NHS website and GPs said they had already run out of vaccines.

NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritcahrd said 545,000 appointments had been secured by 8pm last night, after the booking system crashed.

GPs complained that they had already run out of stocks for their walk-in clinics, after being left with less than 24 hours to order enough doses for all patients. They were given until 9am to place orders for jabs.

And hundreds of Britons are again standing in queues outside jabbing centres, which yesterday stretched to up to five hours long.

Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab acknowledged there were ‘teething problems’ with rolling out boosters after the drive was thrown open to all UK adults. He said it would take ‘a few days’ to ramp up deliveries. 

UK scientists estimate there are potentially up to 200,000 Omicron cases a day. Sajid Javid warned in the Commons yesterday that the overall number of Covid was likely 200,000, but it was later clarified that he meant the super-mutant variant. 

NHS leaders warned last night that Boris Johnson’s ‘booster or bust’ deadline on December 31 is setting the health service up for ‘failure’.

The Prime Minister pledged on Sunday night to offer all eligible adults in Britain a booster jab by the end of the year, and to start administering more than a million a day.

But even at the height of the NHS’s vaccine drive in March, the health service never managed to get more than 850,000 jabbed every day.

There were 397,532 boosters reported yesterday and the rolling average now stands at 425,869 — about half the record daily total of 844,285 in March. It means 18million people in England are yet to have a third jab.

A senior NHS source broke ranks last night to warn that even hitting the a million jabs a day daily target by Christmas would be tough, let alone reaching that during mid December.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid has warned some elective care — such as hip replacements — may be postponed as resources are directed to the booster drive. He has promised, however, that cancer patients will be unaffected. 

Sir Keir Starmer announced he is supporting the Government’s new Covid crackdown as he urged people to ‘stick to the rules’ to help prevent the NHS from being ‘overwhelmed’ by Omicron; The entire NHS England was put on the highest level of alert for the first time since March today after the UK’s Omicron outbreak surged by 50 per cent in a day;Britain has suffered its first death from Omicron, the Prime Minister revealed on a visit to a vaccination clinic near Paddington. However, experts are demanding answers about the UK’s first Omicron fatality, such as the individual’s vaccination status, if they were part of group vulnerable to Covid, and if the virus was the leading cause of death; GPs fumed they found out about the jabbing goal at the same time as the rest of the nation, and NHS bosses warned it would take ‘time’ to get the scaled up programme ‘fully up and running’;Former Cabinet minister David Davis and Labour MPs slammed the Government for failing to ramp up the booster drive in September, and warned the ‘vaccine wall of defence was crumbling’;

Dr Jess Harvey, a GP in Shropshire, complained she had been left with less than 24 hours to reorder doses for every patient over 18 that was already double-jabbed.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘We’re not doing any [boosters] today because there’s an issue with stock, because essentially we’ve been given less than 24 hours to sort out all the stock that we need for the next two weeks for our network, which is nine practices.

‘We’re talking thousands of vaccines and we’ve been given less than 24 hours for everybody to organise their clinics, get their numbers together and us to submit. 

‘We’ve been told those numbers we submit can’t be changed after 9am this morning. I don’t know how we can be asked to operate on something like that but we’re doing it and trying to make the best of it that we can.’

She added that the surgery was still providing appointments, but that it was likely some had been delayed or cancelled.

A senior NHS source told The Times that the vaccine target would be harder than adapting to Covid in March last year or dealing with January’s peak in admissions, and said ministers ‘have a duty to set realistic expectations so they don’t set up the public services they lead to fail’. They added that there was also ‘a real question of how quickly the required increase can happen’, saying it would take several days even to know what was feasible. 

Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals and other NHS trusts, told The Guardian: ‘The NHS is already under enormous pressure, and scaling up in this way will be a huge challenge.’

Yesterday there were long queues for jabs and the NHS booking system creaked under surging demand. Up to 57,000 appointments were made an hour – 16 a second.

The NHS is developing plans for a rapid acceleration of the vaccine programme so that 20million people can be jabbed by January. Hundreds of ‘pop-up’ centres will be opened, including at football stadiums. Some sites will operate 24 hours a day, even on Christmas Day, while pharmacies will be asked to provide jabs outside their regular hours of business.

The 15-minute wait required after an injection may be ditched to increase capacity at small venues.

Around 750 members of the Armed Forces were yesterday called in to help with the mission and councils, fire brigades and police have been asked to offer up any staff trained in delivering jabs. The military deployment will include 60 planners and logistics experts working at NHS England, as well as small teams of soldiers helping out across the country.

However, ministers believe they still need tens of thousands of volunteers to staff pop-up centres and other vaccine sites.

Mr Johnson said: ‘I’m issuing a call for volunteers to join our national mission to get jabs in arms. Many thousands have already given their time but we need you to come forward again, to work alongside our brilliant GPs, doctors, nurses and pharmacists, to deliver jabs and save lives.’

The booster push follows emerging evidence that a third jab may provide up to 70 per cent protection against infection from Omicron, compared with only negligible protection for those who have had two doses. 

It also comes amid reports that supplies of rapid home testing kits for Covid appeared to run dry yesterday after Sajid Javid advised anyone planning to mix with friends and family indoors over the Christmas holidays to take a lateral flow test beforehand. 

After the NHS last week announced a recruitment drive for 10,000 paid vaccinators, 4,500 people registered their interest and 13,000 came forward as volunteers.

Deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam appealed to the 30,000 people who volunteered in the original jabs rollout to step forward again. There are currently 3,000 vaccine sites staffed by more than 90,000 volunteers.

In a letter to health staff last night, NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard acknowledged that some routine appointments would ‘have to be postponed’ to meet the challenge from Mr Johnson.

She added: ‘Some other appointments will need to be postponed to the New Year. If we don’t do this now, the wave of Omicron could be so big that cancellations and disruptions would be even greater.’

Outlining the rollout plans, Miss Pritchard said the NHS would be ‘creating capacity, both by maximising throughput, efficiency and opening times of existing sites to operate 12 hours per day as standard, seven days per week as well as running 24 hours where relevant for the local community, and through opening additional pop-up and new sites’.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has laid down the rule requiring a wait of 15 minutes after receiving a dose of the Pfizer or Moderna jabs. The regulator last week rejected a request by ministers to drop the wait.

A Whitehall source said that scrapping it was essential to meeting the jabs target because small sites such as pharmacies and GP surgeries did not have space to allow more patients to wait. They are also pushing the regulator to assess the case for vaccinating the under-12s.

The NHS will need to exceed 840,000 booster jabs per day in a bid to fight Omicron, which is causing around 200,000 new infections per day, the Health Secretary has said.

Sajid Javid told MPs that every adult across England could expect to be offered a ‘chance to get boosted by the end of this month’ though he suggested not everyone would get a dose in December.

He said: ‘It is asking a huge amount of our colleagues in the NHS.

‘And it’s our joint view that we can try to offer adults a chance to get boosted by the end of this month.

‘And that does not mean every single person necessarily can get that booster, it requires them to come forward and to take up this offer as well, as well as everything going right in this huge expansion plan.’

It follows confusion over whether the Government has promised that people can all have a jab in their arm by the December 31 deadline, or whether they will just have an offer of a future vaccine.

It comes as the UK recorded its first death involving Omicron, and 10 people are in hospital with the variant.

Most of these 10 have received two vaccines and range in age from 18 to 85, though there are no details on whether they have underlying conditions.

Mr Javid told the Commons: ‘Until now the highest number of jabs that we’ve delivered in a single day in the UK was over 840,000. We’ll not only need to match that but we will need to beat that every day. But we can and we’ve got a plan to try and do it. We’re opening more vaccination sites including pop-up and mobile sites that’ll be working seven days a week. We are training thousands more volunteer vaccinators, we’re asking GPs and pharmacies to do more and we’re drafting in 42 military planning teams across every region of our country.’

Mr Javid said he acknowledge that ‘our national mission comes with some difficult trade-offs’, meaning some non-urgent appointments and surgery in the NHS may be cancelled.

He added: ‘These are steps that no Health Secretary would wish to take unless they were absolutely necessary, but I am convinced that if we don’t prioritise the booster now the health consequences will be far more grave in the months that lie ahead.’

Mr Johnson is facing the biggest rebellion of his premiership, with dozens of Tory MPs set to vote against the latest Covid restrictions.

More than 70 backbenchers are threatening to defy the whips and oppose the Government’s Plan B for England, brought in in the face of the fast-spreading Omicron variant. It is reported that up to 10 ministerial aides could resign to vote against the controls.

The measures – including Covid passes for entry into nightclubs and other venues – are expected to pass the Commons on Tuesday with the support of Labour, who back tighter controls.

However the scale of the threatened revolt underlines how difficult Mr Johnson’s position has become following a series of largely self-inflicted wounds suffered by the Government in recent weeks.

It could become even more precarious if the Conservatives are defeated in the North Shropshire by-election on Thursday, where the Liberal Democrats are hoping to overturn a Tory majority of almost 23,000 from the last general election.

The Prime Minister faced a wave of public anger after reports that a series of parties were held in Downing Street in the run-up to Christmas last year at a time when such gatherings were largely banned.

The country’s top civil servant, the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, is currently carrying out an investigation into whether the rules were broken – something Mr Johnson has repeatedly denied.

Within the Conservative Party, it has only served to compound the deep frustration among a large section of backbenchers at the return of new Covid controls.

Many particularly oppose the requirement for Covid passes – showing full vaccination or a recent negative test for the virus – as a serious infringement of people’s civil liberties. 

There is also concern at the economic impact of a return of the working from home guidance on town and city centre businesses at a crucial time of the year if people again stay away from their offices.

Mr Johnson has insisted the measures represent a ‘balanced and proportionate’ response to the emergence of the Omicron variant. 

The health service in England declared a ‘Level 4 National Incident’, which means the NHS centrally will now lead the response to the virus rather than local trusts setting their own course. It will enable vaccine clinics to operate around the clock while hospital trusts will be able to discharge some patients to hotels.

Some scientists have warned that further measures will be required in the coming weeks if the service is not to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of hospital admissions.

However the anticipated Tory revolt – expected to exceed the previous record of 55 under Mr Johnson’s leadership – could badly damage his political authority if more action is needed. For now, the Prime Minister is hoping a ramped up booster jab campaign – significantly increasing the protection the vaccines provide against Omicron – will be enough to enable the NHS to get through the winter.

He has issued an appeal for ‘tens of thousands’ of volunteer stewards and vaccinators to step forward to help deliver the Government’s ‘national mission’ to get the offer of a top-up jab to every eligible adult in England by the end of the month.

‘We need to increase our jabbing capacity to unprecedented levels,’ he said.

Sir Keir Starmer confirmed Labour would support the Government in the Commons vote saying it was their ‘patriotic duty’ to back the additional restrictions.

Under the new measures from Wednesday, NHS Covid passes will be required for entry to indoor venues containing more than 500 people, unseated outdoor venues with more than 4,000 people, and any venue with more than 10,000 people.

Mr Javid said once all adults have had the chance to get a booster, people will need to have had the third dose if they are to be exempt from the requirement to show a negative test.

Anyone faking a pass could be hit with a £10,000 fine while councils will have the power to shut down businesses if they fail to comply with the rules.

Mr Javid told MPs there are now 4,713 confirmed cases of Omicron in the UK, adding that the UK Health Security Agency estimates that the current number of ‘daily infections are around 200,000’.

He added: ‘While Omicron represents over 20 per cent of cases in England, we’ve already seen it rise to over 44 per cent in London and we expect it to become the dominant Covid 19 variant in the capital in the next 48 hours.’

Overall, there were a further 54,661 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases in the UK as of Monday morning, the Government said.

Mr Javid also urged people to have boosters as a way of protecting children.

Robert Halfon, Conservative chairman of the Education Select Committee, asked Mr Javid to ‘make sure schools are kept open in January’.

Mr Javid said: ‘One of the reasons to take the measures we’ve said, especially around expanding the booster programme, is to make sure we can prioritise our children.’

Downing Street has indicated schools will be kept open unless there is an ‘absolute public health emergency’ and warned local authorities against deciding to close early for Christmas as a precautionary measure.

‘There are certainly no plans to put in any restriction on schooling, we know how vital education has been and how detrimental the pandemic has been towards children and young people who, in many cases, have borne the brunt of this,’ the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said.

Earlier, Boris Johnson announced the first UK death with Omicron during a visit to a vaccination clinic near Paddington in west London.

The Prime Minister said: ‘Sadly, yes, Omicron is producing hospitalisations and sadly at least one patient has been confirmed to have died with Omicron.

‘So I think the idea that this is somehow a milder version of the virus, I think that’s something we need to set on one side and just recognise the sheer pace at which it accelerates through the population. So the best thing we can do is all get our boosters.’

Mr Johnson repeatedly declined to rule out further coronavirus restrictions ahead of Christmas but stressed the urgency of people getting boosters.

‘Throughout the pandemic I’ve been at great pains to stress to the public that we have to watch where the pandemic is going and we take whatever steps are necessary to protect public health,’ he added.

In England a booster is available to everyone aged 18 or over from this week as long as the second dose was at least three months ago.

Over-30s can already book a booster online and, from Wednesday, this will be extended to over-18s.

Mr Johnson said MPs thinking of rebelling against Plan B measures needed to recognise there was ‘no room for complacency’ in dealing with Omicron.

Asked about support among his backbenchers ahead of Tuesday’s vote, the Prime Minister told broadcasters: ‘I think that what everybody needs to recognise is a couple of things, that Omicron is a very serious risk to public health, and that it’s spreading very fast, and I think there’s no room for complacency.

‘But we have the vaccines, our position remains incomparably better than it was last year.

‘And I hope that people will also understand, colleagues in Westminster, around the country, will also see that the measures we’re putting in place are balanced and proportionate.’

Responding to the fact the Government website said on Monday ‘there are no more home tests available’ when people tried to order lateral flow kits, the Prime Minister said there was a ‘ready supply’ of tests.

The UK Health Security Agency said earlier that ‘due to exceptionally high demand, ordering lateral flow tests on gov.uk has been temporarily suspended to fulfil existing orders’.

It added: ‘Everyone who needs a lateral flow test can collect test kits, either at their local pharmacy, some community sites and some schools and colleges.’

But Labour shadow health minister Wes Streeting described Covid testing as a ‘shambles’.

He told MPs that pharmacies across the country are out of stock, ‘and even here in Parliament there are no home-testing kits available from Portcullis House’.

He said an increase in demand should have been foreseen and said: ‘This is a serious problem.’

Professor Salim Karim said early data from South Africa looks good.

The former chair of the South African ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19 told BBC News: ‘In the past three waves, about two out of every three patients admitted were cases of severe disease, and right now we have only one out of four cases that is severe – a marked difference.

‘So it looks like, at this stage, you know early data and one doesn’t want to over-interpret it, but the signs are certainly looking good.’

However, it is important to note that South Africa has a younger population than the UK so direct comparisons can be tricky.