Johnson claims link between coronavirus cases and deaths has been ‘severed’

His comments come just two days after his chief scientific adviser said the link had been weakened but not broken

Boris Johnson heads to Prime Minister’s Questions (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has insisted the vaccination programme has “severed” the link between rising coronavirus cases and deaths, despite his chief scientific adviser stating the relationship had merely been weakened.

The Government is braced for a surge in coronavirus cases, possibly around 100,000 a day, as restrictions are lifted, but the Prime Minister said the success of the vaccination programme meant the link between infections and deaths had been broken.

In the Commons he told MPs it was “certainly true” there was a “wave of cases because of the Delta variant” of the virus.

“But scientists are also absolutely clear that we have severed the link between infection and serious disease and death,” he said.

“Currently there are only a 30th of the deaths that we were seeing at an equivalent position in previous waves of this pandemic.”

Sir Patrick Vallance appeared alongside Boris Johnson on Monday (Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA)

His comments come just two days after Patrick Vallance, at a press conference alongside the Prime Minister, said the link had been weakened but not broken.

On Monday, Mr Vallance, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, said there had been an increase in the number of people in hospital, but it was not as steep as it was in January.

“The doubling time is slower than for cases so it’s not rising as fast, but the hospitalisations are rising and are rising quite steeply in some places, and we would expect them to continue,” he told the briefing.

“So essentially what this shows is that the vaccines have weakened the link between cases and hospitalisation, but it’s a weakened link, not a completely broken link, and we will still see increases in hospitalisation.”

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Keir Starmer told Mr Johnson: “We know that the link between infection rates and deaths has been weakened but it hasn’t been broken.”