The UK Vaccine Taskforce’s Professor Sir John Bell has stood by his comments from a week ago hailing a vaccine-driven return to normality by the Spring, which famously had the BBC’s Sarah Montague fist pumping for joy.

This morning Sir John elaborated on the Today Programme, explaining that every year the UK regularly distributes “30-40 million flu vaccines in two months without any effort whatsoever”, extrapolating that it is “completely possible” this country will have vaccinated a very large percentage of the population by the spring. The UK has purchased 355 million vaccine doses from a broad spectrum of companies – some of which are expected to come on stream in December…

Sir John went on to say that the two successful vaccines make it more likely that more vaccines, including the promising Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine will have success “in the coming weeks“, with more data on to what extent transmission is reduced by them. The professor added that sometimes it helps to see the bigger picture…

“We’re having a weird conversation here, we have two vaccines that work for this disease, I mean give me a break!”

Considering some viruses have no vaccine at all after decades of research, the stream of success here is very encouraging…