Thread by @chrischirp

Quick THREAD on vaccine progress in UK:

Firstly, vaccines have slowed down a bit since March - 1.6m jabs last week (but includes Easter weekend).

We are now giving mostly 2nd doses. Expect that to continue until end of May... should still be able to jab 40+ by end May tho. 1/6

53-58% of adults in UK have had a first dose of vaccine and 11%-18% have received a second dose.

Wales is storming ahead with its second doses! 2/6

Digging into English data now...

Almost 60% of over 80's have had their second dose which is great.

One thing to watch out for is whether we will get *everyone* coming back for their second dose across age groups - it's important to get full benefit from the vaccines. 3/6

We still see a gap in uptake by deprivation for the over 55 group of about 10 percentage points.

In the last week, case rates in the most deprived communities were almost 3 times higher than the least deprived... 4/6

Looking at this by ethnicity, the differences are even starker. Only 65% of black Britons over 55 have had a first dose compared to 93% of white Britons.

These differences mean that there *will* be communities that are much less protected as we emerge from lockdown. 5/6

However vaccine acceptability among ethnic minorities has increase markedly since January - we *should* be able to reduce that uptake gap and we must try. As well addressing hesitancy we must make it as easy as possible to access vaccines. 6/6

PS thanks to Bob Hawkins for the charts as ever!