Mr Speaker, I'm extremely grateful to you for accommodating the timing of this statement today. I'd like to update the House on the pandemic, and our roadmap to freedom.
Mr Speaker, this morning I joined some of the remarkable people who have been at the heart of our pandemic response at a service to mark the NHS's 73rd Birthday at St Paul's Cathedral. Together we reflected on a 'year like no other' - for the NHS and for our country.
I know Honourable Members on all sides of this House will join me in celebrating the decision by Her Majesty the Queen to award the NHS the George Cross. I can think of no more fitting tribute to the NHS. I know that everyone in this House - indeed, everyone in this country - will celebrate this award.
Mr Speaker, there's no greater demonstration of our high regard for the NHS than the manner in which we all stepped up to protect it. Now it is thanks to the NHS and many others that we are vaccinating our way out of this pandemic - and out of our restrictions.
86% of UK adults have had at least one jab, and 64% have had two. We're reinforcing our vaccine wall of defence further still.
I can tell the House we are reducing the dose interval for under 40s from 12 weeks to 8… which will mean every adult should have the chance to be double jabbed by mid-September.
And those vaccines are working. The latest data from the ONS shows that 8 in 10 adults have the COVID-19 antibodies that are so important in helping our body fight the disease. When we look at people over 50 - the people who got the jab earlier in the programme - that figure rises to over 9 in 10.
Mr Speaker, allow me to set out why all of this is so important. Before we started putting jabs in arms, whenever we saw a rise in cases, it would inevitably be followed by a rise in hospitalisations and, tragically, a rise in deaths too. Yet today, even though cases are heading upwards in line with what we expected, hospitalisations are increasing at a much lower rate and deaths are at a low level at just 1% of the figure we saw at the peak.
Our vaccines are building a wall of protection against hospitalisation - and jab by jab, brick by brick - that wall is getting higher.
And for those people who sadly do find themselves having to go to hospital, we have better treatments than ever before. Last week, on my visit to St Thomas' Hospital, clinicians were telling me just how transformative dexamethasone has been for their live-saving efforts. Taken together, the link between cases, hospitalisations and deaths is being severely weakened - and this means we can start to learn to live with COVID-19.
As we do that, Mr Speaker, it's important we're straight with the British people. Cases of COVID-19 are rising - and will continue to rise significantly. We can reasonably expect that, by the 19th of July, the number of daily cases to be far higher than today.
Against this backdrop, I know that many people will be understandably cautious about easing restrictions. After many months of uncertainty, this is entirely natural.
But we can now protect the NHS without having to go to the extraordinary lengths we've needed to in the past. That's not to say this is going to be easy, Mr Speaker. Of course the pandemic is not over. The virus is still with us, it hasn't gone away - and the risk of a dangerous new variant that evades vaccines remains real.
We know that with COVID-19, the situation can change - and it can change quickly. But we cannot put our lives on hold forever.
My responsibility as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care includes helping to us turn and face the other challenges that we know we must also address, from mental health to social care to the challenges of long-COVID.
I'm also determined to get to work on busting the backlog this pandemic has caused - a backlog we know is likely to get worse before it gets better.
As I set out to this House last week, Mr Speaker, I remain confident we can move to Step 4 in England on the 19th of July and the government will make its final decision on this on the 12th of July.
Today, Mr Speaker, I wish to set out
