Latest updates: Sajid Javid says PM was talking about ‘general desire for self determination’ as criticism grows over remarks
Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates
And this is what Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said in his morning interviews on coronavirus.
It’s possible there will be an autumn booster campaign, probably for those that are 50 and over, but [the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation] haven’t yet made a final recommendation on that.
Our level of concern hasn’t changed and that’s because although case numbers are rising, infections are rising and indeed hospital numbers are rising, they are still way below their peak.
And it’s also important for us when we review this, understand why they are rising and that is primarily due to the increased social mixing we’re seeing after the country’s opened up, but also the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron which we know is on the one hand more infectious but, on the other hand, we know that our vaccines work just as well against this subvariant.
We have two programmes in place to do that at this point in time. One is the family reunion programme, where, my understanding is, at the weekend there were 9,500 visas issued and then there’s the hosting a Ukrainian family programme where some 150,000 people have registered their interest.
And it’s important that we continue to help in that way. I expect that we will see hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians arrive here in the UK, and they will get all the support that they need.
[Vladimir Putin] has a lot more soldiers [than the Ukrainians], he has a lot more airpower and things, so I think we have to be realistic about where things are heading at this point in time.
I just really fear that, without finding some way to constrain Russia and Putin at this point, that things are going to get a lot uglier .
The Russians just don’t seem that they can be trusted, and especially President Putin, who we know is a compulsive liar. We know that he has difficulty in separating fiction from fact.
I know from my own experiences as home secretary when we were dealing with the attack on Salisbury with an illegal chemical weapon that the Russians lied all the way through it.