At-risk children under the age of 12 will be vaccinated against Covid-19, England's Health Secretary said.
Sajid Javid told a Downing Street press conference that "England's plan has worked" against the Omicron variant and said the variant was "in retreat".
On vaccinations for younger age groups, Mr Javid said the JCVI advises "that we should vaccinate under-12s that are at risk and that is exactly what we plan to do."
He said it would start this month, "but they are keeping that under review to see if we should expand that more broadly to everyone in that cohort."
He said vaccinations, anti-viral treatments and testing would be the “cornerstone of our future defences” as “almost all” restrictions end.
Discussing his future plan to “live with Covid”, he told a Downing Street press conference: “The way we are going to do this is we’re going to have to find a way to remove almost all of these restrictions and get life completely back to normal but with one or two really big things that I think will be there for a while.
“That is I think probably the need to vaccinate, I can’t tell you how often that will be, but I think vaccinations will remain hugely important just as we have to have annual vaccinations protecting older people against flu.
“I think antivirals and treatments will continue to play a big role, especially for those that might be more exposed, and I think testing, it’s great where we are today with testing and I think it will improve over time.
“These pharmaceutical defences of the vaccines, antivirals, monoclonal antibodies, and testing, I think they will be the cornerstone of our future defences.”
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