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* "Very perilous moment", Johnson says
* Hospitals running out of oxygen
* Dangerous time ahead for health service - medical adviser
* UK has vaccinated 2 million so far
* People must stick to lockdown rules, Johnson says
(Adds UK vaccination plan)
By Michael Holden
LONDON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson said
on Monday Britain was in "a race against time" to rollout
COVID-19 vaccines as deaths hit record highs and hospitals run
out of oxygen, with his top medical adviser saying the
pandemic's worst weeks were imminent.
A new, more transmissible variant of the disease is now
surging through the population, with one in 20 people in parts
of London now infected, threatening to overwhelm the health
service with hospitals overloaded with patients.
The death toll in the United Kingdom has been soaring and
now stands in excess of 81,000 - the world's fifth-highest toll
- while more than 3 million people have tested positive.
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 about 15 million people by the middle of next month.
"It's a race against time, because we can all see the threat
that our NHS faces, the pressure it's under, the demand in
intensive care units, the pressure on ventilated beds, even the
shortage of oxygen in some places," Johnson said on a visit to a
vaccination centre in Bristol, in southwest England.
"This is a very perilous moment. The worst thing now for us
is to allow success in rolling out a vaccine programme to breed
any kind of complacency about the state of the pandemic."
The government's chief medical adviser Chris Whitty had
earlier warned the situation was set to deteriorate.
"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 told BBC TV.
"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.
"DANGEROUS TIME"
During the peak of the first outbreak in April, about 18,000
people were in hospital but now there are 30,000, Whitty said,
describing it as "the most dangerous time we've really had in
terms of numbers".
Johnson's government is pinning its hopes on a mass
vaccination programme after Britain became the first country to
approve vaccines developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca and by
Pfizer/BioNTech , and approved Moderna's
shot on Friday.
Its plan, announced on Monday, envisages 2 million shots
being delivered at some 2,700 centres a week in England by the
end of January, with the aim of immunising tens of millions of
people by the spring and all adults offered a vaccine by the
autumn.
Johnson said 2 million people had already been given the
vaccine - more than any other European country - but admitted
that inoculating 15 million people in the four highest risk
levels, including those over 70 and frontline health workers, by
a Feb. 15 target was "a huge ask".
"We believe it's achievable, we're going throw absolutely
everything at it, to get it done," he said.
Opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has repeatedly
accused Johnson of being too slow to respond to the pandemic,
said the prime minister's indecision had cost lives and worsened
the economic impact
"We shouldn’t be facing the slowest recovery and we
shouldn’t be suffering the tragedy of so many deaths every day
from this virus," he said.
Ministers and health chiefs have pleaded with people to
respect lockdown measures and stay at home, amid fears some
people are not adhering to the rules strictly enough, along with
concern that the virus is being spread in supermarkets.
"Where we have to tighten them, we will," Johnson said of
the rules.
(Additional reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Kate Holton,
William Schomberg, Paul Sandle and James Davey; writing by
Michael Holden; editing by Estelle Shirbon, Guy Faulconbridge
and Angus MacSwan)
