Last checked at 
(Adds more quotes)
By Michael Holden
LONDON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Britain is facing the worst weeks
of the COVID-19 pandemic, its chief medical officer said on
Monday, with the health service facing a "dangerous time" as
deaths and cases hit record highs before the rollout of a mass
vaccination programme.
Deaths from the virus have now exceeded 81,000 in the United
Kingdom - the world's fifth-highest toll - with more than 3
million people testing positive. A new, more transmissible
variant of the disease is surging through the population, with
one in 20 people in parts of London now infected.
In a bid to get on top of the pandemic and to try to restore
some degree of normality by the spring, Britain is rushing out
its largest ever vaccination programme, with shots to be offered
to all those in its top four priority categories - about 15
million people - by the middle of next month.
But the government's chief medical adviser Chris Whitty
warned the situation would deteriorate in the meantime.
"The next few weeks are going to be the worst weeks of this
pandemic in terms of numbers into the NHS (National Health
Service)," he said.
"Anybody who is not shocked by the number of people in
hospital who are seriously ill at the moment and who are dying
over the course of this pandemic, I think, has not understood
this at all. This is an appalling situation," he told BBC TV.
"SIGNIFICANT CRISIS"
During the peak of the first outbreak in April, about 18,000
people were in hospital but now there are 30,000, Whitty said,
adding the health service was facing "a significant crisis".
"Everybody says that this is the most dangerous time we've
really had in terms of numbers into the NHS," he said.
On Friday, London's mayor said the British capital's
hospitals were in danger of being overwhelmed by COVID patients,
and ministers and health chiefs have pleaded with people to
respect lockdown measures and stay at home unless it was
essential to go out.
The government is pinning its hopes on a mass vaccination
programme to offer a way out of the pandemic by the spring.
Britain was the first country to approve vaccines developed
by Oxford-AstraZeneca and by Pfizer/BioNTech
, and on Friday approved Moderna's shot. It
is aiming to offer shots to 15 million people by the middle of
next month.
To reach that target, which will require delivering 2
million vaccines a week, the government is opening seven big
vaccination centres while additional doctors' surgeries,
hospitals and some pharmacies will also start delivering shots.
"The vaccinations are really beginning to ramp up, 200,000 a
day, we've done an incredible job this past week," Nadhim
Zahawi, the minister in charge of the vaccination programme,
told Sky News
Those in the four highest risk levels, including those over
70, the most clinically vulnerable and frontline health workers,
will be offered the vaccines by February 15, he said.
"We are now very close to the point, with the vaccinations,
where we are able to get on top of this, but it is not yet,"
Whitty said.
There have been calls for the government to take tougher
action against those who break the lockdown rules, but Zahawi
said ministers did not want to "go any tougher" although
existing measures might be more tightly enforced.
"These rules are not boundaries to be pushed against," he
said. "What we need is people to behave as if they've got the
virus and so that we can bring this virus under control whilst
we vaccinate."
(Additional reporting by Kate Holton, William Schomberg and
James Davey; writing by Michael Holden; editing by Estelle
Shirbon, Guy Faulconbridge and Angus MacSwan)
