Forex Trading For Beginners 2021: Covid-19: Lack of queue jumping helped vaccine drive, says Matt Hancock

Britain's love of queuing helped the UK coronavirus vaccine rollout, the health secretary has said, as jabs were given "according to need, not ability to pay".

Matt Hancock said there had been no "special treatment, no queue-jumping" for politicians, footballers, or royalty, which helped show the system was "fair".

He also confirmed that three in four UK adults have now had their first jab.

But concerns remain over rising cases.

Reflecting on the UK's vaccine rollout at a conference in Oxford, the health secretary said it was important for the public to know people couldn't "buy their way up the queue".

"Prince William, our future king, waited in that same line for his jab a couple of weeks after me - no special treatment, no queue-jumping," he said.

Mr Hancock also announced the government was in talks with AstraZeneca to secure a future version of its jab adapted to better tackle the Beta variant first identified in South Africa.

Any altered vaccine would need to be approved by the medicines regulator, AstraZeneca said.

The health secretary admitted "a few eyebrows were raised" after he revealed the Hollywood film Contagion helped him shape the UK vaccine programme.

"When I watched that film, a penny did drop for me... that the power of the vaccine would be so great that we would have to think very hard about who to protect and in what order," he said.

Famous faces endorsing the vaccines, including the Queen and England's deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, also helped encourage take-up, Mr Hancock said.

He added that while he was aware "this isn't a vaccine world cup", confidence in Covid vaccines has been "sky high" in the UK: "We continue to top the list of places where people are willing to take, or have taken, a Covid vaccine - around nine in 10 of us."

Analysis box by Robert Cuffe, Head of statistics

Unfortunately, even with three quarters of adults having received at least one dose, there's still a way to go.

The first dose of the vaccine gives reduced protection against what will soon be the main type of coronavirus in the UK.

That's the variant first identified in India - now known as either B.1.617.2 or Delta.

There may be a small proportion of elderly and vulnerable people who are not vaccinated or who don't get full protection.

But this is a large country and that's still a large number of elderly or vulnerable people.

If this new strain of the virus truly is as infectious as some estimates suggest, it will find those people and we could see large numbers going into hospital.

Every person fully vaccinated makes it harder for the virus to spread and find them.

But we don't know exactly how infectious it is. That's the key job of the next few weeks - finding out whether the virus we'll be facing in the summer could cause a big third wave or, hopefully, just a ripple.

Meanwhile, speculation continues over whether the government will ease all remaining restrictions in England on 21 June.

Asked whether mask wearing and work-from-home guidance may continue past that point, Mr Hancock said there was nothing in the data to suggest the UK was "definitively off track".

A graphic showing cases over time, rising slowly most recently

The decision on whether to ease the rules fully will depend on how successfully Covid vaccines sever the link between cases and deaths, Mr Hancock said.

Earlier, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: "I'm sorry that's frustrating for people, I know that people want a clear answer about the way ahead for 21 June but at the moment we have just got to wait a little bit longer."

The number of new cases reported daily continues to rise, with 4,330 infections reported on Wednesday. Another 12 deaths within 28 days of a positive test have also been reported.

The proportion of deaths involving coronavirus in England and Wales is at its lowest level for more than eight months, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.