LONDON — The British government on Tuesday announced its Plan A and Plan B for getting through the challenging autumn and winter months in the face of a stubborn pandemic.
The hope is that Plan A will be enough. The government said Tuesday that it will offer free booster shots to 30 million people in the country to protect front-line health workers, those over 50 and any other medically vulnerable people.
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However, if the virus begins to spread exponentially and threatens to overwhelm hospitals during flu season, then Plan B might be required. In that case, the government said it was prepared to reinstate restrictive measures, including mandatory mask-wearing in crowded spaces and the use of vaccine passports to allow people to go to sports events and nightclubs.
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The news that booster jabs are coming follows the announcement Monday night that the government would offer vaccines to all healthy children and teens ages 12 to 15.
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Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the booster program would begin next week in England, with the rest of the country expected to follow suit.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Javid said some of the emergency powers Parliament introduced at the start of Britain’s lockdown in 2020 would be repealed. But others would be kept as part of the government's “Plan B.”
This included contingency measures such as legally mandating face masks — prompting one Conservative lawmaker to cry out “No!” — and working from home. He also said that while plans to introduce vaccine passports for large gatherings have been scrapped, “we will be holding that power in reserve.”
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Later on Tuesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is scheduled to expand on the plans for “living with the virus” and “getting though the winter.”
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Over the weekend, the prime minister said that “extraordinary times required necessary but intrusive measures” but that he was now “determined to get of rid of any powers we no longer need because of our vaccine defenses.”
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The first booster jabs will be offered at mass vaccination sites, starting with those in nursing homes and those over 80 — and then proceeding down through the age groups, said health experts.
Britain is the ninth country, including the United States, to announce a booster campaign. But its decisionmaking has been closely watched, since Britain has been conducting some of the most extensive studies on coronavirus boosters.
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The government has been reviewing data from those studies as it devised its policy, though the findings have yet to be made public.
The booster will be given to those whose second dose of the two-dose regime was at least six months ago. Britain will offer a full dose of Pfizer vaccine or a half-dose of the Moderna vaccine as a booster. In the United States, the question of whether Moderna boosters should be given as full or half doses has delayed authorization.
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Britain’s homegrown vaccine developed by Oxford researchers, in partnership with AstraZeneca pharmaceutical company, will not be used here as a booster.
The British health experts, citing ongoing studies, said that the messenger RNA vaccines — Pfizer and Moderna — give a better boost than AstraZeneca, producing a more robust antibody response.
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AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which has not been authorized in the United States, has also shown less efficacy against the delta variant.
“We all want a normal winter life,” said Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam, but he cautioned that the world was still in an active phase of the pandemic and the cold months could be “bumpy at times,” especially if this winter produces a bad flu season.
Other respiratory viruses are “highly likely to make their return,” he added, so the “aim of the game, the mantra if you like, is to stay on top of things.”
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The World Health Organization has said that wealthy countries with large supplies of vaccines should hold off on giving booster doses until more countries in the developing world are offered first doses.
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Van-Tam said that Britain’s vaccination program has stopped 24 million covid-19 cases and averted 112,000 deaths, and he stressed that this was a “bespoke” booster campaign, and said it was for this winter only, because once the world reached “a steady-state” with the virus, boosters might not be necessary.
Wei Shen Lim, a leader of the Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunization, said evidence shows that especially among people older than 50, vaccine efficacy wanes over time. He gave the example of a vaccine that was 90 percent effective after a second dose at stopping symptomatic covid-19 falling to 80 percent after six months.
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That 10 percent decrease in protection might not sound like much for an individual, but at a population level it could mean many thousands more hospitalized.
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Infection rates in Britain are about 10 times higher today than a year ago. But deaths have plummeted as more people were vaccinated. The country is recording more than 100 deaths a day, far lower than in January, when there were more than 1,200 coronavirus deaths a day. But while the vaccines have stopped many from getting seriously ill, deaths and hospitalizations have been climbing in recent months.
More than 80 percent of the British population ages 16 and older have received both shots.
The move to start booster shots immediately comes just a day after British health officials confirmed Monday night that all children ages 12 to 15 will be offered a single dose of a coronavirus vaccine in England, overturning earlier advice that found the jabs were only of “marginal” medical benefit for youths.
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Britain has lagged behind other wealthy countries, including the United States, which have been immunizing those 12 and older through most of the summer.
Just 10 days ago, Britain’s top vaccine task force recommended against vaccinating the 12- to 15-year-olds, saying the shots were safe and effective but not really worth it for children and young teens, who rarely suffer from severe covid-19 — but would face the risk of very rare serious side effects from the jab.
The British chief medical officers said Monday that the risks to children were not only medical and that a vaccine would help protect the young people from the “massive impact” of missing classes, caused when teachers or pupils who test positive must isolate at home for 10 days or when schools — as they have in the past — are closed to face-to-face learning.
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Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England, said at a news conference that there was “extremely powerful evidence that disruption in education … has been extraordinarily difficult for children.”
Whitty stressed that their recommendation to offer vaccination was based only on what was best for the children, and not an attempt to protect parents, teachers or the wider society from infection.
The decision for England to begin giving one dose of the Pfizer vaccinations at school — which is about 50 percent effective in protecting against symptomatic covid-19 — was confirmed by the vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, to lawmakers Monday night.
As in the case of booster shots, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are likely to follow in coming days.
Both children and parents will be asked to give consent, following the law established in the 1980s that gives competent young people a final say.
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