The UK could enjoy a “happy and free” summer after millions are vaccinated against Covid-19, the health secretary has suggested.
Matt Hancock had warned Britons not to book a summer holiday abroad just two weeks ago, saying he was going to Cornwall.
Since then more than 8.4 million people have received at least one vaccination.
And the government was due to confirm today that a Covid vaccine had been offered to everyone in English care homes.
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But Hancock’s comments came as trade secretary Liz Truss refused to rule out social distancing measures remaining in place for the rest of the year.
Appearing the BBC’s Politics East programme, Hancock, MP for Suffolk East, said: “In six months we’ll be in the middle, I hope, of a happy and free Great British summer – I have a high degree of confidence that by then the vast majority of adults will have been vaccinated.”
He added: “I think we are going to have a great summer, but we will have a tough few months between now and then.”
Ministers “still don’t know” when they would be able to lift restrictions imposed as part of the latest lockdown, he added.
The government has been warned that social distancing rules may have to stay in place unless a vaccine proves to be 85% effective at stopping transmission of the virus, as well as at preventing severe illness.
The caution came from SPI-M, a subgroup of the Sage group of government advisers.
Truss said she did not “want to make predictions about the situation in the autumn, I think it’s far too far away”.
She added: “Long-term predictions in what is a very, very unpredictable situation are not wise.”
Truss, speaking on LBC radio, appeared to contradict her Cabinet colleague.
She said: “We have to just focus on step by step and summer holidays, I’m afraid, are a lower priority than getting kids back to school.
“If there is one thing we have learnt during the coronavirus crisis so far, is how unpredictable things are, what things could emerge.
“I think it would be very dangerous for a government minister to go on your show making promises about people’s summer holidays.”
She accepted that current rules which require quarantine and negative Covid tests would likely be “quite permanent” and would be in place for the “foreseeable future”.
Speaking on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show, she said there was a long way to go before the summer months.
Meanwhile, Public Health England’s Dr Susan Hopkins warned that relaxing lockdown measures would have to be done “very slowly, very cautiously” to avoid a surge in infections.
“We have learnt, as we did on the first occasion, we have to relax things really quite slowly, so that if cases start to increase we can clamp down quite fast,” she told Andrew Marr.
“The NHS is going to be under pressure until the end of March, as normal in winter, but even more so with the amount of inpatients they still have with Covid-19.
“Any releases that we have will have to happen very slowly, very cautiously, watching and waiting as we go, with a two-week period to watch and see the impact of that relaxation because it takes that to see what’s happening in the population.”
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