THERE was more good news about the roll-out of the vaccination programme at last night’s Downing Street briefing.

Vaccines are going in at the rate of 28,000 per hour, 12.2m people have had their first jabs since the programme began two months ago, 91 per cent of over-80s have had their first dose, and 95 per cent of those aged 75 to 79.

It is an astonishing effort.

And there was more good news, with the numbers of deaths, infections and hospital admissions all going down – although there is still a long way to go.

Perhaps the best bit of news is that there has been a radical shift in Government advice. Previously, people were expressly forbidden to contact the NHS to discuss when they were to be invited for a vaccine, and this caused a lot of stress among older people who feared that the great computer system might somehow overlook them. With no obvious logic in the way people in a community were being called, there was real anxiety among those yet to get the call-up that they had fallen between the cracks in the floorboards.

The reversal in the advice means that all over 70-year-olds are now asked to contact the NHS if they haven’t been offered an appointment. This will reassure many people, and perhaps it proves that computer systems aren’t as infallible as their makers like to think.