Covid vaccine will not be available in UK until spring, says Vallance

Chief scientific adviser added it was unlikely Covid would be completely eradicated

• Coronavirus - latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

A vaccine against coronavirus will not eradicate the disease or be widely available before the spring, the government's chief scientific adviser has cautioned, following reports that a jab could be available as early as the new year.

Giving evidence to the joint Commons and Lords national security strategy committee, Sir Patrick Vallance said that before Covid, it had never taken less than about five years to develop a vaccine from scratch, with an average time of 10 years, but that new vaccine technologies had helped to shrink that timeframe.