UK administers 15 million vaccine doses

• The UK has reached its target of first Covid-19 vaccine doses to 15 million of its citizens.
• The announcement was made by minister in charge of the vaccination programme Nadim Zahawi on Twitter.
• The country had set a target to reach care home residents and staff, frontline health and care workers, all those aged 70 or over and the clinically extremely vulnerable.

Britain has now given 15 million people their first dose of vaccine against Covid-19, the minister in charge of the vaccination programme said on Twitter on Sunday.

"15,000,000! Amazing team," Nadim Zahawi tweeted, citing data compiled by the I news website using totals from each of the United Kingdom's four constituent countries. The official data will be published at around 1600 GMT.

After becoming the first in the world to approve a vaccine, the government set an ambitious target to reach care home residents and staff, frontline health and care workers, all those aged 70 or over and the clinically extremely vulnerable.

Foreign minister Dominic Raab said it was too soon yet to discuss when restrictions could be lifted.

"We share all of the ambition and the desire to get out of this lockdown, we want to do it responsibly and safely and therefore it's got to be based on the evidence," he told Times Radio.

Raab was responding to a letter from 63 lawmakers from the ruling Conservative Party which demanded that all lockdown measures be lifted by the end of April.

That is the date by which the government wants to have vaccinated the cohorts that have so far accounted for 99% of all deaths - an estimated 32 million people.

"Once all nine priority groups have been protected by the end of April, there is no justification for any legislative restrictions to remain," the letter organised by the Covid Recovery Group said.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will set out on 22 February the government's plans to end the lockdown, and has said he wants schools to reopen on 8 March.