Covid booster jabs extended to over-18s — here's how to book yours

The target for giving every adult in England a booster jab has been brought forward by a month over fears of a "tidal wave" of the omicron variant.

Boris Johnson, in a pre-recorded address to the nation on Sunday evening, warned that one million Britons needed to have the third dose every day, totalling to 18 million doses by the new year, in order to avoid any future restrictions on "our freedoms".

Following the announcement, thousands of people looked to book their booster vaccination online causing the NHS booking website to crash, while others faced lengthy queues. 

A statement on the website said: "The NHS website is currently experiencing technical difficulties. We are working to resolve these issues. Thank you for your patience."

Mr Johnson stressed that that being fully vaccinated is "simply not enough" to prevent the spread of omicron and that, without a lightning speed mass booster campaign, the NHS could be overwhelmed.

The mission to administer millions of jabs by December 31 will see 42 military planning teams deployed across every health region, extra vaccine sites and mobile units, extended clinic opening hours to allow people to be jabbed around the clock and at weekends, and the training of thousands more volunteer vaccinators.

The announcement comes as the UK Covid alert level was raised to Level 4, up from Level 3, following a rapid increase in the number of omicron cases being recorded.

The UK Government will also support the devolved administrations to "accelerate" their own rollouts of third jabs.

However, the acceleration will mean some NHS appointments would need to be postponed until the new year. 

Here is everything we know.

Booster vaccines per 100 people

Who is now eligible for Covid booster jabs?

Boris Johnson confirmed on Sunday the launch of the Omicron Emergency Boost, "a national mission unlike anything we have done before in the vaccination programme".

He announced that everybody aged 18 and over who had their second vaccine at least three months ago will have the chance to get their booster before the new year, bringing the previous target of boosting all adults by the end of January forward by an entire month, after the wait between the second and third doses being halved from six months to three. 

Bookings for those groups will open on Wednesday.

"This will require an extraordinary effort. And as we focus on boosters and make this new target achievable, it will mean some other appointments will need to be postponed until the new year," he said.

"But if we don’t do this now, the wave of Omicron could be so big that cancellations and disruptions, like the loss of cancer appointments, would be even greater next year."

It comes after Education Secretary and former vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi described the UK as in a "race" to get the coronavirus booster to eligible adults "as quickly as possible".

How can I book a booster vaccine?

Prime Minister Boris Johnson previously said that people should not try to book their vaccination until they are invited to come forward by the NHS, but added: "We are going to throw everything at it, to ensure that everyone eligible for that booster will be vaccinated within two months".

He said temporary vaccination centres would be "popping up like Christmas trees", with the military, pharmacies and GPs deployed to match the daily vaccination rate seen earlier this year. 

On Sunday, he confirmed that there will be 42 military planning teams deployed across every region, additional opening hours so clinics are open second days a week, and additional vaccine sites and mobile units.

People are being encouraged to book their boosters on the NHS website, but this crashed immediately after Mr Johnson's announcement as thousands rushed to the site. Many have since reported lengthy delays as those eligible wait in a virtual queue to access the booking system.

How often will booster shots be needed? 

Professor Saul Faust, leader of a trial looking at the effectiveness of seven different boosters given after two doses of either the AstraZeneca or Pfizer jabs, says that anyone willing to answer this in certain terms is just “speculating”. “At this point we don’t know,” Prof Faust, professor of paediatric immunology and infectious diseases at the University of Southampton, explains. “No one can know at this stage whether we will need boosters every year.”

He says that levels of immunity seen in people after a third dose was much higher than after the first two, adding that the vaccines elicited a broad T-cell response, a key part of the immune system, alongside antibodies. 

“Even though we don’t properly understand its relation to long-term immunity, the T-cell data is showing us that it does seem to be broader against all the variant strains, which gives us hope that a variant strain of the virus might be able to be handled – certainly for hospitalisation and death if not prevention of infection – by the current vaccines,” Prof Faust says.

Boosters not only improve immunity, but also protect far above peak levels of second dose

Which booster should I get? 

Prof Faust’s study, published in the Lancet, which looked at the AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, Novavax, Janssen, Valneva and CureVac jabs, found that while all worked well as a third dose, some were more effective than others. “The RNA - Pfizer and Moderna - were very high, but there were also very effective boosts from Novavax, Janssen and AstraZeneca as well.”

The vast majority of people will be offered the Pfizer or Moderna jabs and the small number of people who are ineligible for this type of jab will be offered AstraZeneca. As with the first vaccine round you won't be able to choose which vaccine you get so there's a chance you may receive a different brand of booster. A study by Oxford University found that mixing and matching vaccines can actually induce more immunity than having the same brand of jab.

Will the vaccine need to be tweaked to make it more effective?

The flu jab needs to be reformulated every year because a different strain circulates each season. It’s an imperfect solution because scientists have to make an educated guess as to which strain is likely to be dominant – some years they miss the mark, meaning vaccine efficacy is as low as 10 per cent. It’s too early to say whether Covid jabs will have to undergo the same process. The vaccines we’re using at the moment were all developed to work against the original Wuhan or “wild” variant, and we know from the past year that they’re effective against alpha and delta strains. But whether that means they’ll be effective against all future variants is another question.

Should I wait for an omicron version of the vaccine?

“No,” says Prof Faust. “People need to have boosters as quickly as they can.” Scientists at the UK Health Security Agency are currently looking at samples from Prof Faust’s study to see how well the omicron variant can be neutralised by vaccines, so it might be that our current boosters are good enough. Levels of immunity in young people from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines “are high,” he adds. 

In recent studies, booster doses have been found to provide 93 per cent protection against severe disease. At the moment, it is not known how well the jabs work against the new omicron variant, and there may be a level of “mismatch” between vaccine and variant. However, scientists believe that the jabs are still likely to prevent severe disease. 

Similarly, analysis by the UKHSA has found that the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines provide "much lower" levels of protection against symptomatic infection with omicron compared with delta.

But the UKHSA said a booster dose gives around 70 per cent to 75 per cent protection against symptomatic infection with omicron, as it urged people to have their boosters.

Will a future vaccine replace the need for boosters?

There are several trials underway that are testing vaccines that work against multiple variants – to remove the need to tweak a vaccine every year. But scientists don’t know how long immunity from these “variant-busting” vaccines will last, so an annual top up may still be required. 

What will this mean for the NHS?

GPs, pharmacies, hospitals and even the military have been roped into this “Great British vaccination effort,” as the Prime Minister described it. GPs have already been told they can drop routine checks for the over 75s in a bid to speed up the roll out.

Dr Bharat Pankhania, a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter, says that a booster campaign would be “good value for money”, but without proper funding and training it could overwhelm the health system. 

“We need to have a forward vision,” he adds. “This thing is not going away, and because it’s not going away we need to invest in our primary care networks and community pharmacists.” 

Paul Mainwood, an analyst tracking the UK’s vaccine rollout, added that the cost of the current programme “is negligible compared to the cost of a) a new lockdown, b) crashing NHS capacity in about two months.” 

There are now 3,000 vaccination sites across the country - more than double the number at the start of the year - while pop up clinics will make shots even more accessible. You can find your nearest walk-in clinic offering booster jabs using the NHS finder.

The NHS has also been recruiting 10,000 paid vaccinators and also volunteers as the vaccination rollout expands again.

Chance of hospitalisation and severe Covid cases plummets following booster jab

Who is likely to receive an annual booster?

As mentioned above, all over-18s will soon be able to book an appointment due to the omicron strain, but in future – when we know more about variants and immunity – it may be that only those over the age of 50 will be eligible, as they are with flu.

How long before vaccine fatigue kicks in?

While some have raised concerns that seemingly never-ending vaccinations could hit take-up, Dr Pankhania says that “in my many years of administering vaccines, I haven’t come across anyone saying they’re fed up after having too many jabs.” 

What about global vaccine supplies? 

Much of the planet still does not have access to coronavirus vaccines – only three per cent of shots rolled out worldwide have been administered in Africa, for instance. Many experts are concerned that the current scramble will only make things worse. 

“The only real way to truly end the threat of the virus here at home is to get first and second doses everywhere as fast as possible,” says Romilly Greenhill, UK Director at The ONE Campaign.

“Unless the Government hears that wake-up call, there is a real danger that relying on booster jabs alone is simply a holding pattern rather than a genuine strategy to end the pandemic.”

How many boosters have been given?

There have been 23,124 million booster jabs administered as of 11 December.

The best day was reported as 10 November, where 532,238 boosters were given, closely followed by 11 December with 530,086. However, numbers have only gone above the half million mark on these two days.

If this continued at the current seven day rate then in 20 days (data from 12 December until 31 December) 8,098,140 more people will have been jabbed.

Raising the boosters bar

But, at current rate, to get 18,000,000 more people jabbed in the next three weeks at the seven day average rate of 404,907 that would take 44 days.

And to get 18 million more people jabbed in 20 days (from 12 December until 31 December), 900,000 would need to be getting jabs every day.

This would mean the programme would need to jab 2.2 times as many people per day to reach that target. 

Could the booster rollout coincide with the flu jab programme?

It could; studies have shown that having a Covid and flu jab at the same time is safe, and has no impact on their efficacy. But while flu is particularly potent between September and February, the Covid jab can be more easily paced throughout the year, says Dr Pankhania. “That should make it much easier... [as] it’s not as onerous as doing it within three months.”