Over 100 days on the job and vaccines minister Maggie Throup finally made her first media round appearance this morning to discuss the booster rollout. Having last appeared on national television on 2nd December for a botched Question Time showing – where the audience laughed at her for insisting “all guidance was perfectly followed” over Downing Street’s lockdown drinks – Guido was beginning to wonder if she’d gone into winter hibernation. Asked by LBC’s Nick Ferrari why she was practically invisible compared to her predecessor Nadhim Zahawi, Throup insisted she’d “done lots of media interviews”:
“I’ve been very busy, I’ve done lots of different media…I’ve been on LBC before, I was on one Sunday, I’ve done lots of media interviews, so it’s always good to be on. And you know, it’s such a great day to be on, with this anniversary of the AstraZeneca [rollout]…”
Throup also appeared on Sky News this morning, where she confessed she couldn’t give a figure for how many hospitals are declaring critical incidents because “it is fast-moving [and] it would be wrong of me to say a number”. So much for looking at the data ‘hour by hour’ then.
