The healthcare backlog will be Boris Johnson’s next challenge

Boris Johnson’s coronavirus press briefing this evening was largely an upbeat discussion of how the vaccination programme is being rolled out, including a look at the logistical side of things with Brigadier Phil Prosser. So far, nearly 1.5 million people have been given the vaccine across the UK, and the Prime Minister said there was sufficient supply for all the top four priority groups to have been immunised by 15 February.

This is all very well, but the reason we are in the current lockdown is that ministers want to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed before the vaccines have been rolled out. It’s now not clear this will happen: today the Health Service Journal has a leak suggesting London hospitals could be overwhelmed within a fortnight, while yesterday Manchester Council leader Sir Richard Leese warned the city’s hospitals were ‘at serious risk of falling over’. Hospitals in the Midlands could run out of critical care beds in two weeks, according to this report,