UK Covid live: Javid says non-urgent appointments to be postponed to help booster jabs rollout

Good morning. Boris Johnson has set a target for the government to offer all adults a booster vaccine by the end of the month. Here is our overnight story reporting the announcement.

This morning Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has been giving broadcast interviews, and he has admitted that, as GPs and hospitals in England focus on this target over the next few weeks, non-urgent appointments will be postponed. He told the Today programme:

It does mean that, when it comes to primary care, for the next couple of weeks that our GPs will only be focusing on urgent needs and vaccinations. And it also means that non-urgent appointments and elective surgeries may have to be postponed into the new year.

Javid insisted that this would not affect people wanting to see a doctor about cancer symptoms. That would count as an urgent appointment, he said.

Asked what hospital appointments might be postponed, Javid replied:

It will be anyone who’s got some elective surgery planned, for example, that can be postponed until the new year. So that might mean, for example, a knee operation or hip operation, something that sadly someone has probably been waiting [for] for a long time in any case, but the hospital concerned would have the right to postpone it if it meant they would get a lot more booster jabs done.

Javid said these decisions were “not easy”. But there was limited capacity in the NHS.

Asked if this would mean people dying who would not have died if these appointments had not been posptponed, Javid said: “What will lead to real harm is if we don’t do this.”

I will post more from his interviews shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Boris Johnson is visiting a vaccination centre, where he is expected to give a TV interview.

11.30am: Downing Street holds its lobby briefing.

3.30pm: Sajid Javid, the health secretary, is expected to make a statement to MPs about the vaccine booster programme.

4pm: Antonia Romeo, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice, gives evidence to the Commons public accounts committee about the courts backlog.

4.30pm: Max Hill QC, director of public prosecutions, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee about rape prosecutions.

Also today Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, will be meeting foreign ministers from the Balkans.

I will be largely focusing on UK Covid-related issues today, but there is much more coverage on our global Covid live blog.

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