Have your say: Will UK be 'back to normal' by spring following vaccine breakthrough?
The UK is preparing to deploy an effective coronavirus vaccine which could provide the key to ending the pandemic.
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced on Monday that their COVID-19 vaccine has been more than 90% effective in a trial of more than 43,000 people.
As a result, one of the government’s top scientists said he was “hopeful” the vaccine could be ready by Christmas, while a member of its vaccine taskforce predicted life may return to normal by spring.
On Tuesday, health secretary Matt Hancock told Sky News he has asked the NHS to be ready to deploy the vaccine from the start of December.
When pressed on whether the UK could return to normal by spring, Hancock said: “This is promising news, but it is one step of many that we need to take to get out of this and to tackle this pandemic once and for all.”
“We want to get life back to normal as quickly as possible. I am not going to put a date on it because there are so many steps we need to go through.”
Read more: Weekly coronavirus deaths in England and Wales go above 1,000
