Boris Johnson says 'anti-vaxxers are nuts'

Boris Johnson has labelled people opposed to vaccinations “nuts” as he urged the public to use an expanded flu jab programme to ease pressure on the NHS if there is a second wave of coronavirus this winter.

Visiting a doctor’s surgery in east London to promote the extension of free flu jabs to more people, Johnson told staff: “There’s all these anti-vaxxers now. They are nuts, they are nuts.”

The prime minister’s comments highlight the worries in government and among NHS leaders that a potential rise in Covid-19 infections in the coming months, coupled with a bad winter flu season, could overwhelm health services.

In response, the usual winter programme of free flu vaccinations is being expanded this year to everyone over 50. Johnson said the plans would immunise “a very, very significant proportion of the population”, and urged people to take part.

“We want everybody to get a flu jab in the run-up to this winter,” he told Sky News at the surgery. “And that’s why we’re rolling out the biggest ever programme of flu immunisation.

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“We’re aiming first of all for school children up to year seven, for pregnant women, for people over 65, people who have been shielded. But then we’ll be extending it to people from 50 to 65.

“The reason for doing this is to protect the NHS in the winter months because, obviously, we’ve still got Covid – we’ve still got the threat of a second spike of Covid, and it’s vital therefore to keep that pressure off the NHS by everybody getting a flu jab, and I really hope everybody will.”

The government has so far shied away from the idea of making any vaccinations compulsory, despite a fall in childhood inoculation levels, something partly put down to social media misinformation and scare stories about vaccines.

Last year, the UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, said the government was “looking very seriously” at making vaccinations compulsory for state school pupils and had taken advice on how such a law could work, but the idea was played down by No 10.

Johnson said that while he was worried about a second wave of Covid-19, he believed the UK would be over the crisis by mid-2021.

“Whether it came from … a bat, a pangolin or however it emerged, it was a very, very nasty thing for the human race,” he said. “And I think by the middle of next year we will be well on the way past it.”

He added: “But, I must be clear with people, I do still think that we have tough times ahead in keeping this virus under control.”

Quick guide Will there be a second wave of coronavirus? Show Hide Epidemics of infectious diseases behave in different ways but the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed more than 50 million people is regarded as a key example of a pandemic that occurred in multiple waves, with the latter more severe than the first. It has been replicated – albeit more mildly – in subsequent flu pandemics. How and why multiple-wave outbreaks occur, and how subsequent waves of infection can be prevented, has become a staple of epidemiological modelling studies and pandemic preparation, which have looked at everything from social behaviour and health policy to vaccination and the buildup of community immunity, also known as herd immunity. Is there evidence of coronavirus coming back in a second wave? This is being watched very carefully. Without a vaccine, and with no widespread immunity to the new disease, one alarm is being sounded by the experience of Singapore, which has seen a sudden resurgence in infections despite being lauded for its early handling of the outbreak. Although Singapore instituted a strong contact tracing system for its general population, the disease re-emerged in cramped dormitory accommodation used by thousands of foreign workers with inadequate hygiene facilities and shared canteens. Singapore’s experience, although very specific, has demonstrated the ability of the disease to come back strongly in places where people are in close proximity and its ability to exploit any weakness in public health regimes set up to counter it. In June 2020, Beijing suffered from a new cluster of coronavirus cases which caused authorities to re-implement restrictions that China had previously been able to lift. In the UK, the city of Leicester was unable to come out of lockdown because of the development of a new spike of coronavirus cases. Clusters also emerged in Melbourne, requiring a re-imposition of lockdown conditions. What are experts worried about? Conventional wisdom among scientists suggests second waves of resistant infections occur after the capacity for treatment and isolation becomes exhausted. In this case the concern is that the social and political consensus supporting lockdowns is being overtaken by public frustration and the urgent need to reopen economies. The threat declines when susceptibility of the population to the disease falls below a certain threshold or when widespread vaccination becomes available. In general terms the ratio of susceptible and immune individuals in a population at the end of one wave determines the potential magnitude of a subsequent wave. The worry is that with a vaccine still many months away, and the real rate of infection only being guessed at, populations worldwide remain highly vulnerable to both resurgence and subsequent waves. Peter Beaumont

Asked how long he thought distancing and other protective measures would be needed, Johnson said: “The use of face masks, the use of all the social distancing measures really does depend on our ability collectively to get the pandemic right down and to keep it down.

“I’m not going to make a prediction about when these various social distancing measures will come off. Obviously we have been able to reduce some of them. We no longer ask people to stay at home, we’re trying to get back much closer to normal, but our ability to dispense with the social distancing measures will depend on our continued ability to drive down the virus.”

On the day masks became compulsory for almost all adults in England in shops, banks and takeaway food shops, Johnson was asked if the public should be “shaming” those not wearing them.

He said: “I think we should rely on the massive common sense of the British people that have so far delivered the results that we’ve seen, and that’s going to work.”