Covid-19 Update

My right hon. Friend has deep experience in this area, and I am very grateful for what he said—that was very kind. He is absolutely right about the fact that viruses always mutate, and we can rise to that—we can respond to that—as we do with flu. This is another area in which the parallel with how we manage flu as a country is the right one, because the flu virus mutates most years. We work out, observing the Australian winter, what is the most likely variant we will get in our winter, we adjust the vaccines to that variant and then we roll them out over the autumn. That sort of programme is likely to be needed in this country for some time to come. We will start later this year with the booster shots, and we will make progress after that according to the evidence as we see it. I hope he was not trying to make a point of something; I always try to be rational, but it is sometimes hard.