Dr Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser at the UK Health Security Agency, has said while the Covid-19 booster rollout was going well, she is urging more people to come forward to get their top-up jabs.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, she said:

There’s over 60% of the population that are being offered boosters [who] are taking it up. I think it’s slower than we saw in the first round.

I think that may be due to people thinking they’re already protected, which is why we’re giving a lot of public health messages about why it’s so important for them to come forward for that third dose.

Hopkins said the peak number of new cases was on 18 October, with nearly 58,000 people being diagnosed.

She said that while the UK is now at the flattening of the peak, the country could still stay at a “very, very high level like this, which will mean that we have deaths that could be prevented by vaccination”.

Asked who was dying as a result of contracting Covid-19, Dr Hopkins said:

The people who are dying are the same people who have died all the way through.

It is particularly the older age groups, so the over-70s in particular, but also those who are clinically vulnerable, extremely vulnerable, and have underlying medical conditions.

She said there are still deaths in the elderly population due to about 5% of those remaining unvaccinated and the waning effects of the vaccine on those who have been jabbed.

Acoording to the government’s latest vaccine surveillance report published this week, 2,032 double-vaccinated individuals over 70 have died, and more than 3,000 from the same age group were hospitalised despite having had both jabs.

Dr Hopkins added that while it is too early to say the virus has nowhere else to go, its changes are likely to be “smaller and more incremental from here on in”.

Outlining if she thinks this will be the last Christmas where people will be wearing face masks, Dr Hopkins said:

Hopefully this will be the last Christmas where we have to think that way. I think we’ll know much more when we get to the spring and as time goes on.

I do think, though, that this is going to be part of our endemic seasonal influenza and other respiratory viruses.