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Booster jabs to be requirement for NHS travel vaccine passports, says Johnson

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Heathrow Airport has reported a busy October of passenger traffic ahead of the festive months, despite concerns of a wider slowdown.
Heathrow Airport has reported a busy October of passenger traffic ahead of the festive months, despite concerns of a wider slowdown.

Booster jabs will be added to NHS vaccine passports and will be required if people want to be considered as “fully vaccinated” for international travel, according to Boris Johnson.

Johnson said at a Covid press conference today that booster jabs “will make life easier for you in all sorts of ways” and that “we will have to adjust our concept of what constitutes ‘fully vaccinated'”.

People who are fully vaccinated, currently defined as having had two vaccines, need to only order a day-two Covid test when entering England from abroad.

People who are considered as unvaccinated have to take two tests on arrival and a further one three days before entering the country, all of which is far more costly.

The Prime Minister said that eventually everyone will need to have boosters to maintain their current freedoms when travelling.

All people over the age of 40 are currently eligible for booster jabs, with this expected to be further expanded in the coming months.

“We will be making plans to add the booster to the NHS travel pass, but the general lesson is for anyone who wants to travel – you can see getting fully vaccinated with a booster will, on the whole, make your life easier in all types of ways. Including foreign travel,” Johnson said.

“It’s very clear that getting three jabs, getting your booster, will become an important fact and will make life easier for you in all sorts of ways. We will have to adjust our concept of what constitutes fully vaccinated to take account for that and that is increasingly obvious.”

The latest government figures show that more than 70 per cent of over-70s have now received their booster jabs.

The figure stands at 22 per cent for over-12s.

England’s deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam today said the booster vaccine programme was now moving at “considerable pace” and that it had “fundamentally changed the course of the pandemic”.

“For Christmas and the winter period, we can expect respiratory viruses to be around and we’re particularly concerned that the flu will come back and add to our problems,” he said.