Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC this morning, the Health Secretary went into quite some detail as to how the Matt Damon film Contagion helped him with preparing the UK’s successful vaccine strategy. It all hinges on avoiding a row about prioritisation…

“In the film it shows that the moment of highest stress around the vaccine programme is not in fact before it’s rolled out, when actually it’s the scientists and the manufacturers working together at pace. It’s afterwards when there’s a huge row about the order of priority. 

So not only did we in this country – I insisted we ordered enough for every adult to have their two doses, but also we asked for that clinical advice on prioritisation very early, and set it out for the first time in August or September, so that there was no big row about the order of priority and instead we  asked the clinicians and we do it on the basis of how we save most lives most quickly.”

Guido’s not sure the Labour Party got the memo…